100
by TobermorySpeaks
Summary: Based on the fanfic100 prompt table: 100 short pieces featuring Daryl and Andrea.
1. 7: Days

On the first day, it's Michonne who suggests they go to the highway.

Andrea's told her about the group - delirious, babbled fragments of thoughts, that tumbled loosely from her lips until Michonne was able to sit her down and get some food and water in to her. Then, on their first night together, sitting in tree branches while Michonne's two pet walkers circled below; Andrea told her almost everything. The roadtrip with Amy, meeting Dale, stumbling across Rick's group, the walker attack and Amy's death, the Greene farm...she tells her about Glenn's canny street smarts, Shane's roaming hands and wandering eyes, Carol's loss and greif, Beth's attempt at suicide and later realisation that she wanted to live. She tells her about the last night on the farm, about the walkers and the fire, about the screaming and the tears; and the horrifying moment when she couldn't find anyone amongst the carnage and had to run to the woods for safety as a last resort. She tells her almost everything, except for a few key details - she glosses over one person, still unsure how she's going to tell the story because it seems almost surreal to her. There was a man, Daryl, a hunter from the mountains of Georgia, good with a crossbow and intelligent in ways she never expected him to be. That's all, she says, and her eyes don't meet Michonne's as she speaks.

The next morning when they wake, bones aching from lying in a bed of branches all night, Michonne rations out breakfast and then starts walking, katana in hand.

"Where are we going?" Andrea still feels nervous in the woods, she doesn't have Michonne's cynical ease in the forest yet.

"To the highway," Michonne says, "Don't you want to find your group?"

By the time they get to the road, Andrea's heart is in her throat. When they reach the long stretch of highway, she can't hold back, and she runs down the road, jumping over discarded boxes and clothing, weaving around cars and bodies; until she loses her breath. She turns her head wildly, looking for a sign, anything to show that they were there.

"Rick!" she calls, tears starting to form in her eyes. "Daryl!"

"Honey - shh," Michonne approaches from behind and puts a hand on her shoulder. "There could be more than just your group out here."

Andrea nods, swallowing around the lump in her throat. "They left," she whispers. "They didn't wait."

"You don't know that," Michonne says, although the look in her eyes is hard.

"They either didn't wait or they never came," Andrea says. "I thought they'd - I mean, I thought if there was anywhere that we'd meet, it'd be here."

"Are you sure they'd have made it?" Michonne asks, measured, and Andrea nods.

"They had cars, bikes - they would've made it out," she says. "I know it."

Michonne turns and looks up and down the highway. Next to her, her two walkers groan unhappily. "We can wait," she says at last. "Maybe tomorrow they'll come."

They sleep in a car on the side of the road that night, the front two seats pushed down as far as they can go. Andrea pulls the blanket over her head as she closes her eyes, willing herself to shut out the moans of the walkers outside, willing herself to imagine that the events at the farm never happened; and that she's back in the Greene's yard, in Daryl's tent, pillowed against his chest as he sleeps.

The next morning, she wakes to find Michonne sitting on the hood of the car, katana between her feet.

"No sign yet," she says, and Andrea tries to ignore the rising bile in her throat.

They pick through the abandoned cars for supplies, finding clothing, first-aid kits, and packaged food. Michonne stuffs a rucksack full of the found items and hoists it over her shoulder, and Andrea does the same, wandering down the highway until they almost can't see the part of the woods they came out of.

"...we should stay for another night," Andrea says, nervously. "It's almost dark."

Michonne watches her for a second, takes in her shaky breaths and the despondent look in her eyes, and says, "Sure".

It's Andrea who wakes first the next morning, and as the sun rises on her side, she calls his name down the empty highway. "Daryl?" She fears to raise her voice too loud. "Daryl...?"

The dawn is silent, and she wipes her eyes, folds her arms around herself, and goes to find a protein bar.

That night, when she begins to cry out her sister's name in her sleep; she wakes with a gasp to find Michonne's hand over her mouth. "Shh," the woman says, sharply, "We can't have that. You're going to attract attention."

Andrea nods silently, tears streaming from her eyes, and curls back in to her car seat; imagining that she's not alone out on the highway with a woman she barely knows, that instead she is with him, warm and safe, in the privacy of his tent - his arms around her, breath warm on her neck, crossbow nudging against her foot. She doesn't know what time she finally falls asleep, but she sees the sun peeking from beyond the horizon as she does.

They stay another day, for supplies, Andrea protests, and safety, it's better sleeping in cars than in trees - and Michonne begrudgingly accepts it, slipping the walkers' chains from her shoulders and letting them wander away, locked together, for a little while before she goes to collect them. Andrea watches, disgusted, as they stumble over each other attempting to get at Michonne. The woman shows no fear on her face, however, no reaction, as she nudges them away with her boot. "Go play somewhere else," she mutters to them, twirling her katana between her hands.

The next morning, Andrea wakes with the sun again, and takes to the highway again, calling his name. Again. This time, she's not greeted with the rev of a motorcycle (as she hopes), or silence (which would almost be preferable to what she does get) - she's startled by a low moan near her ear.

"Jesus -" she leaps to the side as the walker grabs for her, it's bedraggled hand only inches from her side. "Michonne!"

Before she can finish screaming the other woman's name, she is there, but she doesn't dispatch the walker with a swift blade to the head as Andrea expects - she takes it down with a boot to the chest then a quick stamp to the knees, before thrashing its skull with her boot heel. By the time the thing finishes moaning and writhing, it's been a good five minutes, and Michonne is breathless and shaking, legs spattered with walker blood.

"Fuck," Andrea whispers, stomach churning. "Why even carry the knife, then...?"

Michonne shrugs. "Need something to take your emotions out on," she says nonchalantly, eyeing off her two walkers as they tangle themselves around the telephone pole she stationed them at the previous evening; before she turns to Andrea and looks her square in the eye. "Now, who's Daryl?"

"I - what?" Andrea stutters.

"Daryl. You say your sister's name in your sleep, that I understand. But you say his as well. And then you come out here in the mornings and call his name. He was in your group, wasn't he?"

"Yes," she whispers.

"And you loved him?"

"Michonne -"

"That's why you've been waiting here, right? For him to come back."

Andrea drops her head, silent. "I'm sorry," she says, at length. "I was...I didn't want to say."

Michonne shrugs. "We've all been in love."

"Were you...?"

"I was," she says, and with a hand on Andrea's arm, nods at the walkers bumping in to each other by the telephone pole. Andrea almost laughs at them, until Michonne interjects: "The one on the left - my boyfriend. The one on the right - his best friend."

Andrea's knees almost give out. "What? Why...? Why do you...keep them?"

Michonne doesn't answer. She looks down the highway to the left, then to the right. Finally, she grabs the fallen walker by the arm and begins to drag him off in to the forest. "Two days," she calls over her shoulder. "We wait two more days."

The sun rises the next day, and Andrea can feel the hours ticking by on a time limit. She longs to hear the sound of his motorcycle, of a car, of anything, so badly that she thinks her ears will burst from it. She finds herself scanning the horizon constantly, mistaking every leaf that blows and bird that flaps for a sign of him arriving over the horizon. But he never comes, and still she waits, loyal and utterly heartbroken, until Michonne comes to her side on the afternoon of the second day.

"Sweetie," she whispers, and she doesn't have to continue, because Andrea knows what she's going to say.

"One more day," Andrea says, and doesn't try to stop the tears that fall on to her cheeks.

"Andrea," Michonne's hands reach out for Andrea's chin, and she turns her face so the two women are facing each other. "He may not have made it out. It's not safe for us to wait around here for someone who might be arriving as a man, or as a walker, or not at all. Walkers aren't the only things that roam these highways, and they're certainly not the most dangerous. If you want to stay...honey, after tomorrow morning, you're on your own."

Defeated, Andrea remains on watch for the rest of the evening. Slumped against the car bonnet, she remains in a state of half-consciousness while Michonne sleeps in the driver's seat behind locked doors. She wants to wrap her head around the two walkers Michonne brings with her, but she can't. For not the first time recently in her rational, well-portioned, highly-managed life; she sags under grief. In a way, it wouldn't be as hard if he was dead, because then at least she'd know - but no, it would be just as hard, she thinks, because the one thing that's been keeping her going over the past months and making her hang on would be taken from her forever. If he isn't dead, then at least he's safe, she reasons; even if the reason why he never came back for her was because he didn't love her enough, or it was too dangerous too, or maybe just the demons in his own head turned out to be a bigger threat than any walker. Maybe she wasn't enough to break down those walls he put up, to help him forgive and to forget, to help him learn to open up...

By the time the sun rises, Andrea's eyes are red and puffy from crying, her eyelids half-closed. She's dimly aware of a lowing behind her, and only when she hears a thud-thud-thud on the car does she spin around. The walker approaching her isn't one of Michonne's, it's a female, with long flowing dark hair and a torn dress. Andrea rises from her seated position quickly and calmly, fronting the walker head-on and delivering a swift kick to its side. It stumbles, bones snapping as it trips, and Andrea uses its hair as leverage as she slams the head against the car wheel, again and again, until all that's left in her hand is a mass of hair and muddled flesh.

"Nice work," Michonne says, from above.

Andrea looks up. "Thanks," she says, and hopes the tears of fear she undoubtedly wept aren't too evident on her face.

"We have to get a move on."

Andrea nods and stands, wiping her bloodied hands on her trousers. As she waits for Michonne to untie her walkers before they leave the highway for the last time, she catches a glimpse of someone in a truck window nearby. She almost jumps - the person she sees standing there is tall and slightly-too-slender, with wiry muscles visible beneath her sunburnt skin. Her blonde hair is pulled back in to a ponytail and could probably use a trim, and on her belt she carries a pistol that matches nicely the other guns in the bag she holds. It takes Andrea a while to realise she's looking at herself.

It doesn't take her long to realise her face isn't tear-stained at all.

"Come on," she sets her jaw and calls to Michonne. "Let's go."


	2. 24: Family

Andrea sighs shakily and moves to shift the rifle off her knees and on to the flat roof of the RV. Alone, she takes in the view and the silence, staring out in to the woods around her. Somewhere out there amongst the trees and the birds lies a pile of dirt with her sister's body in it, her wispy blonde hair and beautiful smile, her favourite top with the star print on it and her little mermaid necklace. Andrea watched as they carted her body away with all the others; her little sister - her only sibling - now destined to become nothing but food for worms, in a mass grave somewhere in the woods. Tomorrow, they will leave this camp, and Amy will remain behind, in the cold ground.

She sits down at the edge of the camper, knees pulled up against her chest, and hugs herself tight. The tears begin to fall freely and she lets herself cry for every phone call of Amy's she never took, every birthday party she never went to, every silly e-card she never responded to, and every text she ignored. What was the name of Amy's crush at college? She can't remember. She can't remember her favourite song, whether she's allergic to eggplant or to bell peppers, her most hated professor or even her pet fish's name. It was as though Amy went from being the irritating twelve-year-old who followed Andrea like a shadow to being the woman they had just buried, in the space of a day. How did Andrea miss it? Why did she let herself?

She sniffs deeply and wipes her nose on the side of her hand, tears blurring her eyes. It's not until he moves in to the corner of her eye that she realises he's there.

"Jesus -" she jumps instinctively away, one hand on her heart. "Would you mind not sneaking up on people?"

Daryl shrugs. He wears a red flannel shirt open over a dark grey wifebeater; and his work pants hang low on his hips. In one hand he carries a rifle and in the other he carries his crossbow; and the knee of his trousers is covered in what looks like a dark, sticky, red liquid - and little tufts of fur. "Sorry," he says with a shrug. "You alright?"

"Fine," Andrea still hasn't turned to face him. She wipes her face off quickly with her sleeves and blinks rapidly to clear her eyes. "What are you doing up here?"

"Came to relieve you. My turn to keep watch."

"I'm okay," she sniffs. "You can go, I'll be fine. Go and do whatever it was you were doing."

"Well, I was thinking about comin' up here, to see if you were okay. You want me to go back down and do that again, or...?"

"Don't be a smartass."

He sits down next to her at the edge, legs crossed. "Upset about your sister?"

"Yeap," Andrea says, giving him a look that sarcastically encourages him to state the obvious again.

"You got full rights to be," he shrugs. "It's tough. Losing someone. Losing a sibling. Ain't easy."

Andrea shakes her head. "Especially when it's your own fault," she says.

"Why're you blaming yourself?"

"I should have been there. I should have been looking out for her...protecting her. I was never there for her back when everything was, well, 'normal' - and I'll never have that chance now. We're probably the only twenty people left in the world and I still found something better to do than be there for her."

"Hey, you were there for her. You can't be by her side every second of the day. You could've been the best of friends but she still would'a got bit comin' outta the john."

Andrea stills, and for a few seconds, she's silent. Then: "Thank you, Daryl. Thank you for reminding me that my sister died while coming out of the john. Maybe we should put that on a fucking headstone."

Daryl laughs mirthlessly and pushes his hair back from his face. "All I meant was, you can't be watchin' over someone every minute of the day. What happened was an accident. Ain't your fault."

Andrea shrugs. "Guess it doesn't matter now," she says, bleakly. Then, she pauses. Losing someone. Losing a sibling. Ain't easy. "Were you upset when Merle...you know?"

He looks at her for a second, frowning. She's about to apologise for asking before he says, "Hell yes. That was my brother. That's a dumb question."

She nods. "You just never seem to...you know. Show it. I don't know how you deal with it so well."

"Maybe he ain't dead," Daryl says, frankly. Andrea looks up. "That's what I'm thinking. He was a tough bastard, my brother, and if anyone can make it outta the zombie apocalypse, even with only one hand, it's him."

"I can't say he and I ever bonded," Andrea says, measured, "But I hope we find him. For your sake."

"Good man," Daryl says, nodding. "He was a good man."

Andrea opens her mouth to say something, then re-considers. Before she can speak at all, though, she realises that Daryl is making a noise she's never heard him make before. She turns to him - he's laughing. Considering that she can't even remember seeing him smile previously; this is unusual.

"What's so funny?" she asks.

He shakes his head. "Aw, man. I was just thinkin' - years and years ago, when I would'a been about fourteen or fifteen; Merle spent the whole Fall in prison. He got out just before Christmas. So my mama's puttin' together Christmas dinner - we ain't really ever celebrate any holidays too much, but she'd done a Christmas dinner with all the trimmings, even my daddy'd gotten up and ready for this - so she's puttin' together Christmas dinner, and fretting about Merle getting home, you know, makin' sure he's on his best behaviour. So the whole night he's sittin' there, not a peep out of him. Perfect son. And then midway through dinner," Daryl drops his head, laughing again, "Midway through dinner, I swear on my fuckin' life, the turkey starts talkin' to me. So I'm sittin' there, watching this fuckin' bird scream out every time my daddy cut in to it - before long I start answerin' it back, you know. Merle had snuck me shrooms, that sneaky fucker. He's sittin' there acting the perfect son, and he snuck me fuckin' shrooms. So my mama's carrying on, freaking out, and my daddy...oh, man. Funniest cunt I ever met, my brother was."

Andrea looks at him for a long while. "I think that's the most I've ever heard you say, Daryl," she says, and he shrugs. "And it isn't even actually funny. You could have died."

He shakes his head. "Can't die from shrooms, Merle always said. Not unless they're death caps. But that motherfucker was fearless. He'd try anything, wasn't afraid," he begins to laugh again, "I remember when I was just a kid, he used to find these fuck-off big spiders outside - and he'd tape 'em on to my door knob, with duct tape. So there I was, scared shitless of spiders to the point where I didn't even wanna be in the same room as 'em, but too scared to open the fuckin' door and get out -"

Andrea has a sudden flashback to when Amy moved out in to her dorm for the first time. Andrea had been in the city, working late, and got a call from Amy at almost midnight. When she picked up the phone, it took her ten minutes to calm her sister down enough that the younger girl could explain there was a huge black spider in the shower, and could Andrea come over and kill it? Amy was close to tears; and Andrea had told her to stop being so stupid and slammed the phone down. Her sister couldn't shower for a week after that. But the thought of Amy's shrill, hysterical voice on the other end of the phone - begging Andrea to come and help, and she had just said no - she bites her bottom lip quickly and tries to blink away the tears that fill her eyes, but to no avail. She reaches up to put a hand over her face before she starts sobbing again.

"Shit," she hears Daryl say quietly next to her, then, "It ain't that sad...cured my fear of spiders, in the end...".

Andrea shakes her head. "It's not that," she says, hating how weak and thin her voice sounds. She wipes the tears from her cheeks. "Amy's scared of spiders too. When she first got to college, she rung me up begging me to come over and kill a spider in her shower. I was never there for her, Daryl. I always had some stupid, selfish fucking reason why I couldn't go out of my way for her. And now it's too late. I just really miss her. I wish she was still here."

She rests her head on her knees again, cheeks red; embarrassed at her tears but unable to stop them. She wishes more than anything that he, Daryl, would just leave her in peace to cry - she wouldn't say she could call him a friend, and if someone has to be around to witness this particular moment of weakness, couldn't it be Jacqui or Dale? Or even Carol?

It's then that she feels his hand tentatively on her shoulder. He strokes her, like one would stroke a particularly skittish dog; and he's saying, "Hey, it's okay. It's alright. You'll feel better. It ain't gonna be like this forever".

"Thanks," she whispers.

"You ever lost someone before?"

She shakes her head. "My great-grandmother Irma, when I was about eight," she offers, but in reality she was more scared of Great-Grandma Irma than anything else. She told war stories about the old country and reeked of chicken broth. Eight-year-old Andrea had never bonded well with her.

For a long while, they're both quiet, and then Daryl speaks, his voice barely above a whisper. "Y'know, when I was young - wouldn't'a been too long after that Christmas that Merle snuck me shrooms - I lost my mama. Hung herself. And I tell you, the sight of that - when you're fifteen or sixteen, comin' home from school to see that - it sticks with you. Couple years after that, my daddy died. Drunk himself to death. Can't say I ever really cried over him. Pretty sure there was only three of us at his funeral: Merle, me, and some guy he owed money to. Mean old son of a bitch, he was. But my mama, and Merle..." Daryl trails off. Andrea looks over and realises he's toying with something between his hands as he speaks. "You know, you never stop missin' people who die. Never. Wish I could tell you that one day you ain't gonna think about what happened to Amy no more, but you ain't. You'll always think of that. But I can tell you that one day, totally outta the blue, you'll think about something your sister said, or did - and you'll laugh. Or you'll feel pissed off at her for somethin' stupid she did. Or you'll think about, you know, something other than missin' her. And that's how it'll always be. It never stops hurtin', it just hurts less...that's all I can tell you."

She presses her lips in to a thin smile. Thin, but genuine. "Thank you," she whispers.

He shrugs. "Don't get used to it. I ain't Doctor Phil."

Andrea laughs, a genuine laugh. "What is that?" She says, gesturing to the object in his hand.

He opens his palm and displays it to her. "Mouse skull on a keychain."

"Jesus, Daryl," she shakes her head, laughing again. She wipes her face again, eyes finally dry. She looks out over the woods again, suddenly tired; then turns to him and looks at him for a few seconds, regarding him. Finally, she says, "Thank you. I...didn't know you had it in you."

He simply shrugs. "Glad you're feeling better."

"I am," she nods. "I guess I should get some sleep. You sure you'll be okay up here...?"

"Yeah," he waves her away. "Go to bed. You need some shut-eye."

"Okay. Goodnight," she says, leaning down to squeeze his shoulder as she stands. His eyes dart to her hand as she does so, and she feels the muscle tense under her touch.

"'night," he says, as she walks away. She's almost sad, in a way she can't define, that he didn't ask her to stay.


	3. 25: Strangers

"Well," Dale says, as he puts his plate to the side. "This is cosy."

Andrea looks across at him, from where she is sitting on log in front of the fire. Only a few days ago, she and Amy had ventured out of their car and crept down the highway, hand-in-hand, ready to beg, borrow, or steal to get some more food. They had taken minimal supplies on their road trip and after having eaten through two boxes of Oreos, a bottle of juice that Andrea was pretty sure she'd left in the car for six months, and a packet of mints, their hunger became too much to ignore and they ventured out in to the rest of the world. It was Dale who spotted them first, his RV stopped only a few cars ahead of theirs, and who asked them if they were okay and if they needed anything. He was only too happy to share what he had, and didn't seem to mind at all that the girls had little of their own to offer him as thanks.

"Cosy indeed," Andrea says, eyeing off the other two people sharing the fire's warmth. Merle Dixon sits next to Dale, a napkin tucked in to the collar of his plaid shirt, looking every inch a pastiche of a sophisticated diner. He holds his knife and fork in fisted hands, as though they're drumsticks, and every now and again Andrea notices his eyes wandering over her. It didn't take long for her to decide that she didn't trust him as far as she could throw him. Daryl, his brother, stands slightly away from the group, gazing off in to the trees nearby, a drumstick of meat in one hand. He's the quieter one of the pair (Andrea has barely heard him speak since they met), younger, and more muscular than his brother. Andrea catches a flash of ink here and there on his tan skin, and notices his almost obsessive attachment to the crossbow that sits on his shoulder.

"To our chef," Merle says, lightly, picking up the plastic green cup on the ground in front of him and raising it. "To Dale."

Dale laughs and puts a hand up sheepishly, but toasts Merle anyway. Amy, seated on the ground next to Andrea, and still tucking in to her canned spaghetti and meathballs, smiles.

"I'm just happy that all you gents were able to take us in," Dale says, earnestly. "It's getting tough out there, and I tell you, we three aren't exactly the meanest group to ever exist."

Dale raises an eyebrow in the direction of Andrea and Amy. True, the three of them together out there on the highway weren't the scariest-looking people, but she was happy with just the three of them sticking together - it was Dale who wanted to go off-road when he saw the campfire smoke, and Dale who asked if they could join up with this group.

"Our pleasure," says Merle, with a wink at Andrea.

"I suppose it was really more Shane who took us in," Andrea says pointedly. "We should be thanking him."

"Oh, I have," Dale says, missing the exchange between Merle and Andrea entirely. "I just hope we're able to pull our weight around here."

"I'm sure you will be," says Merle, eyes never leaving Andrea.

"You know, it wouldn't hurt for us all to get to know each other a bit," Dale says, reproachfully. "We might be here for quite some time."

He reminds Andrea so much of her father that it's not funny. His kindness and generosity, for one; but also his mannerisms and way of speaking; and the way he still bothered to get out knives and forks, even when they were eating in front of a campfire in a world over-run by walking corpses. The way he offered Merle and Daryl sunscreen - sunscreen, of all things - a few seconds after meeting them. He was enforcing humanity in an increasingly inhuman world, Andrea decided, and his idea of 'getting to know each other' was just a continuation of that. But Dale, she was happy to get to know. Merle and Daryl, on the other hand; with their caches of weapons and Southern drawls, were not the kind of people Andrea made a point of getting to know.

"What would you like to know?" Merle smiles. Even his smile, Andrea decides, she doesn't trust.

"Well," Dale thinks for a second. "What do you boys do for a living?"

Andrea laughs to herself. Professional hitmen maybe? Tattoo artists? Grand Vizier of the Ku Klux Klan?

"Have to say, I haven't had much of a chance to make m'self a livin' recently," Merle says. "Been, uh, locked up over a little misunderstanding regarding some packages I was holdin' for a friend of mine."

"Oh, really?" Andrea looks up in disbelief. "Prison, really?"

"Hey hey, calm down," Merle laughs. "Just a misunderstanding, is all. I was holdin' some packages for a buddy o' mine when the cops came callin', and I wasn't about to let him take the rap. Did the right thing, I did. Loyalty and all."

Andrea shakes her head. Even Dale looks suspicious now.

"Drugs?" Amy asks, and Andrea nudges her shoulder, quieting her.

"Weren't mine, is all that matters," Merle says, and Andrea catches Amy's muttered 'sure'.

"What about you, Daryl?" Dale asks, turning to face the younger brother.

Daryl turns slowly, biting the last piece of meat off the drumstick he's eating before throwing the bone off in to the bushes.

"Daryl's a carpenter," Merle interjects, "Dab hand with a hammer and nails. Can fix anythin'".

"Is that right," Dale says, keeping the peace. "We'll have to keep that in mind if we need anything patched up on the RV."

Daryl just shrugs and turns away.

"But Andrea," Merle says, "I wanna know more about you."

Andrea shoots him a look. "Nothing much to know. Andrea. Thirty-six. Attorney; civil rights. I live in Atlanta, or at least I used to. And this is my first apocalpyse," she adds, darkly.

"You forgot to mention beautiful," Merle drawls.

"Drop it, I'm not here to meet a man," she hisses.

"Shh," Daryl says, suddenly. He freezes, body half-turned towards the group. "Keep your voices down."

Andrea feels Amy still against her leg and her hand goes to her little sister's shoulder automatically. "It's okay," she whispers.

Merle stands and whips his head around, looking for whatever made the sound that apparently only Daryl could hear.

After a few seconds of silence, Daryl shakes his head. "'s fine," he says. "Thought I heard something."

He continues to pace the perimetre of the campfire as Merle laughs and sits back down. "Anyway," he says, "Dale. Fill us in. Tell us about yourself."

"Dale Horvath," he begins, "I'm sixty-eight. I was going cross-country in the RV when all of this started happening. Married once...and no kids. Unfortunately."

"No kids, that's a pity," Merle says.

"Indeed," Dale smiles. "Amy. Why don't you share a little something about yourself?"

Amy shrugs. "I'm Amy, I'm twenty four, obviously I'm Andrea's sister...I study Law at college, like Andrea did. Um, I'm on the track team, I went to Europe last Summer...anything else?"

"And just as beautiful as your sister is," Merle says. Meeting Andrea's eyes, he raises one eyebrow. "Two beautiful blondes, how lucky we are."

What happens next, happens in a spilt second. Amy tells Merle to shove it, Andrea stands up ready to give him a piece of her mind, and Daryl whirls around and fires his crossbow directly over Merle's shoulder.

The group is silenced. Andrea falls back down on to the log she was sitting on as Daryl steps forward to the walker he has just shot down, not a few feet from where Merle sits.

"Daryl Dixon," he says. "Thirty-eight. Georgia. And I hate," he says, placing one foot on the walker's neck to steady it while he leans down to tear the crossbow from its eye, "Wasting bolts on these fuckin' things." Without another glance back to the group, he grabs the walker by one arm and drags it off in to the forest.

Andrea watches him, silenced.


	4. 28: Children

They had spent most of the day in silence; after burying Dale, it was clear that neither of them had a whole lot to say. Andrea had learnt by now that when Daryl had something on his mind, he tended to busy himself with work rather than talk it out, so she had spent the past few hours watching him whittle new crossbow bows, clean his boots, and dump an armful of sticks and dry leaves on to the fire in preparation for the evening; before he finally settled for working on the bike. Andrea watches him for a little while, kneeling next to the machine and turning wrenches, before he finally glances over to her.

"What're you looking at?"

She shrugs. "Just watching you work."

"Are you mad?"

"At you?"

He grunts in assent. "About, you know. 'bout Dale."

"No," she says, quickly. "...he was suffering. You did the right thing."

Daryl nods, lips pursed.

"Would you agree?" she asks, finally.

He opens his mouth to speak and then looks up over Andrea's shoulder. "Hey Carl," he says, standing. Andrea turns.

"Hi Daryl," the boy says, with a tilt of his slightly-too-big Sheriff's hat. "Hi Andrea."

"Heya," Andrea said, turning to face him. "What's up?"

"I need to give this back to you," Carl says, with a deep breath. He reaches behind his back and removes a black pistol that looks entirely oversized in his small hand. "I took it from your brother's bike, and I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done it and I don't want it any more. You can have it back. Here."

Daryl takes the gun from the boy's hand, brow furrowed. "Why'd you take it?"

"I thought I could use it. I wanted to go kill a walker. Just so I knew I could. Ages and ages ago, Sophia and I were playing, and we found a walker, but we both ran away because I didn't know what to do. I couldn't protect her. And I know it's too late now, but I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it if I had to. But I couldn't."

Daryl nods. He looks down at the gun, and back up at Carl. "Well...okay, I mean, don't do it again, alright? Or I'll have to...let your folks know."

"Okay," the boy says. "And I thought I should come and tell you that it's not your fault that you had to kill Dale. I...saw that walker. The same one. I saw it that day and I was going to use your gun to kill it. But it got mad at me. It was stuck in the mud and I was throwing rocks at it, but it moved and I thought it was going to get me. So I ran. I couldn't kill it. I'm sorry."

Andrea looks up to Daryl, who in turn looks entirely overwhelmed by what Carl has said to him. He opens his mouth and then shuts it again.

"I'm sorry that you're a murderer because of me," Carl blurts.

"Carl," Andrea says, softly. She's never been particularly good with kids but she guesses that her child-interaction skills are a bit higher than Daryl's. "What happened to Dale was a horrible accident. It's nobody's fault. If anything, he shouldn't have been wandering around the farm alone. It's not your fault, because protecting us against walkers isn't your responsibility. It's your Dad's, and your Mom's, and ours as well. We're here to look out for you because you're still young, and we don't want you to take on that kind of job yet, okay?"

"Okay," Carl says.

"And what Daryl did, he did because he didn't want to see Dale suffer any more. Dale was very hurt," Andrea swallows around the lump in her throat, she had not wanted to relive the past twelve hours just yet, "Dale was very hurt. Unfortunately there was nothing Hershel could do to help him. He wasn't going to make it, and none of us wanted to see him suffer. That's why Daryl did what he did. So Dale wouldn't have to be in pain any longer. Does that make sense?"

Carl nods, and Andrea smiles encouragingly at him. "But Carl," she says, "You need to leave things like guns, and walkers, for the adults to take care of, okay? If you'd had an accident with that gun and hurt yourself, or if that walker had gotten you, your mother would have been devastated. I know this might not make sense right now, but you need to do the right thing by her and keep yourself safe. So she'll never have to feel upset about losing you."

"Like Sophia's Mom was?" Carl says, and Andrea nods.

"Just like Sophia's Mom."

"Why did you keep looking for Sophia?" Carl asks suddenly, looking up to Daryl.

He hesitates for a second, and Andrea watches him. He doesn't look down to her. "Thought I'd find her."

"So did I," Carl says.

"We tried," Daryl says, finally.

"Were you trying to find Sophia because you're in love with Sophia's Mom?" The boy says, and Andrea can feel herself blushing. "Shane always looked out for me, because he was in love with my Mom."

"Uh," Daryl turns to look at the farmhouse, then in the other direction at the tent. "I'm friends with Sophia's Mom, but I don't like her in the same way your Mom likes your Dad or Shane. Liked Shane. She still likes him, I mean, but probably not in the same way anymore. Like your Dad." Daryl finishes awkwardly.

"Who are you in love with?"

"None of your business," Daryl responds quickly, and Andrea purses her lips.

"Are you in love with Andrea?"

"None of your business!"

"Daryl and I are good friends, Carl," Andrea says at last, smiling. "Like you and Sophia were."

"Sophia was my girlfriend," the boy says, indignantly. "I was in love with her. And when you're in love with someone, you're meant to protect them."

Andrea can feel her face fall, she doesn't know what to say anymore. She'd spent so long thinking about Daryl searching for Sophia, and Carol's grief over losing her daughter, and her own loss of Dale; that she had ignored the fact that Carl had lost the person he could probably relate to most.

"C'mere," Daryl says suddenly, and extends his arm out to Carl. He crouches down to meet the boy at eye-level. "I'm gonna tell you something. Man-to-man."

He lowers his voice so that Andrea can't overhear what he's saying to Carl. But he puts a hand on the boy's shoulder as he speaks, and he looks gravely at Carl as he nods. Finally, he takes the pistol from the back pocket of his jeans, and hands it to Carl. Andrea watches as points at different parts of the gun - the trigger, the barrel, the handle - and then moves next to Carl and shows him how to aim it. Before he hands it over to the boy, though, Daryl warns him - with one finger up, speaking slowly. Carl nods quickly and Daryl hands him the pistol. He looks over the brushed metal before putting it in to the back of his pants and extending his right hand to Daryl. Daryl takes it, and shakes it twice.

Carl turns and walks back to the farmhouse before turning on his heel and waving goodbye to Andrea as he walks. She waves in turn, and he breaks in to a little run as he heads across the field.

"What was that about?" Andrea finally asks, when the boy is out of earshot.

Daryl is sitting aside the bike. "Secret mens' business," he says.

"The kind of secret mens' business that a kid would need a gun for...?" She raises an eyebrow.

"We were talkin' 'bout protecting our women," Daryl says, and revs the bike.

"Really."

"Yup."

"And who exactly would your women be?"

"Ain't women, just one woman."

"And who's that?" Andrea approaches the bike and puts her hands on the handlebars, a few inches away from Daryl's. He just looks up at her, one eyebrow quirked. "Carol?"

Daryl snorts. "What do you think?"

"Not sure," Andrea says, playfully.

"It's not Carol," Daryl says, and reaches for Andrea. He guides her around to the side of the bike, and pulls her on to his lap. "C'mere."

Andrea falls side-saddle on to the seat of the bike in front of Daryl, and she wiggles her eyebrows. "Are you keeping an eye out for me, Dixon?"

"I figure you can't shoot for shit, so someone has to," he says, hands on her thighs.

"Hey," she laughs. "Maybe you ought to give me some lessons then. Me and Carl. We could become your little sharpshooter apprentices."

"Maybe," he says, "Or maybe it don't matter how well you can shoot, because I'm always gonna be here to look out for you."

"Mmm," she says softly, hands in his. "I hope so."


	5. 30: Death

"Grandma?"

Andrea stops in the hallway and turns, slowly. Did she hear a little voice call out to her? The door is ajar and she puts her head in.

"Heron?" she whispers, in to the night-lit room. "Are you awake, sweetie?"

"Grandma," the little voice says again, and Andrea flicks on the light. Heron sits up in bed, her tiny grandson, all of seven years old. His brown hair is in tangles on top of his head and his chubby little face is red and tear-stained.

"What's wrong?" she says, concerned. She approches the bed and sits down slowly, her back burning with pain as she bends. She reaches out for the young boy and he climbs in to her arms. "Why are you crying?"

He begins to sob against her chest and she strokes his hair, comforting him. "Sweetheart," she says, "Did you have a nightmare?"

Heron shakes his head. "I'm scared," he says.

"Of what?" Andrea searches his eyes. Reflected in them is a soft green glow; outside their window, the Washington Holograph stands as tall as it has since the day they started projecting it, a fluroescent obelisk in the sky. The soft whirr of hovercrafts and hovercycles can be heard from the road below, and every now and again, the reassuring 'beep' of the security system in the apartment compound can be heard from the front room. Heron's mother and father are sleeping not ten metres away down the corridor, exhausted from long days at work. Everything's fine, exactly as it should be.

"I'm scared of dying," Heron says, wiping his nose along his pyjama sleeve.

"Why ever would you be thinking about that?" Andrea asks.

"I dunno," the boy says, "We were learning about the Old Days in school today. About all the people who died. I don't wanna die."

"Oh, Heron," she reaches out a hand to wipe the tears from his cheeks. Her skin is wrinkled and thin, flecked with small scars. On her left hand she still wears her wedding ring. It was never the best ring that money could buy, it was just a plain ring he had found in a jewellery store one day when they were searching for supplies - but when he gave it to her, he promised to one day buy her a beautiful ring, the kind she deserved. When luxuries like diamonds and money existed in their lives again, he said would buy her the very best; but by the time coins and notes became something she had to use, he couldn't buy her another one. So she kept it. It reminded her of what brought them together - love. Nothing fancy, just pure, dedicated love. "You're not going to die! You're still a young boy. You have so many more years of life left. You will live to be ninety or a hundred, at least."

"How old was Grandpa when he died?" Heron sniffs.

Andrea's face falls. "Things were different when your Grandpa was alive. That was back in the Old Days. The world was very unsafe then, not like it is now."

"How did he die?"

"He was shot," Andrea lies.

"Why?"

"He died protecting me," she whispers, a tear forming in her eye. "Your Grandpa was a very good man. He knew that I had your Daddy on the way, and he wanted me to be safe. He died so I could escape the...gunfire, and get to safety."

"Why was someone shooting at him?"

"I don't know, honey," she sighs. "People did a lot of things back in those days that we don't do any more."

"Like eat people?"

"Heron, I want you to listen to me. Look up," Andrea says, and her grandson's bright blue eyes meet hers. "What happened back in the Old Days was very bad, people were very sick. And their sickness made them do things that...they wouldn't normally do. Like bite people."

"Did Grandpa get bitten?"

"Of course not," Andrea says, voice shaking.

"Our teacher says that the people who were dead came back to life."

"Well, yes. They did."

"Did Grandpa come back to life?"

Andrea swallows. "I don't know, honey."

"Will more dead people come back to life?"

"No," Andrea shakes her head. "Now, when somebody dies, we do special things so we know there's no chance they will come back to life. What happened in the Old Days is never going to happen again. That's why we have the police and the soldiers, and that's why we have the government. Because they look out for us and make sure we're safe."

"But what if something goes wrong?"

"What do you mean?"

"What if something happens and the dead people do come back?" Heron's lower lip is wobbling. He looks up at her with scared, tear-filled eyes. The last time she saw his grandfather's eyes, they looked exactly the same. Bright blue, the colour of cornflowers. And filled with tears. She looks down to her lap.

"Heron, when your Grandpa died, he died because he wanted me to stay alive for your Daddy. He died so that I could live, and protect our family. I promise that for as long as I'm here, I will always protect you no matter what happens. That's why I'm here. You are my reason for living, and I will never let anything bad happen to you," she whispers. "I promise."

Heron nods.

"Now come on," she takes a handkerchief from her sleeve and wipes her eyes. "Back to bed. Go to sleep."

"Will you sing me a song from the Old Days?"

"We didn't have many songs in the Old Days," she says, sadly.

"Sing me some really really old music then," Heron whispers, and shuts his eyes. "A song that Grandpa knew."

Andrea sighs. She strokes his hair off his face and sings in a small whisper.

"_He's got eyes of the bluest skies,  
As if they thought of rain,  
I hate to look in to those eyes,  
And see an ounce of pain.  
His hair reminds me of a warm, safe place,  
Where as a child, I'd hide;  
And pray for the thunder, and the rain,  
To quietly pass me by.  
Oh, oh, sweet child of mine,  
Oh, oh, little love of mine_."


	6. 33: Too Much

"Hey." She comes to his tent after she finishes her shift keeping watch. It's been an unusually chilly night; and although she usually doesn't mind sitting up on the RV during a balmy Georgia evening, the nip in the air gave the atmosphere an edge that she doesn't like. The trees seemed more gnawed and crooked than normal, and more than once, she imagined seeing the long grass part to make way for rogue walkers. She bounced her finger up and down on the rifle trigger, anxious; and tried not to think too much - about Amy, about her parents, about her friends...she tried so hard not to think about anything that she thought she was going to pop a vein from focusing. In the end, she settled for counting stars until Dale came to relieve her.

"Hey," he says. He's lying in his sleeping bag, the book she brought him in one hand.

"You enjoying that?" she asks, nodding at the book.

"Nope," he half-smiles, and flips it closed on to his chest.

She laughs. "Thought I'd come by and see how you were. Do you...need anything? Another book, something to drink...?"

He shakes his head, no. She stares at him for an awkward moment; taking in his jawline, the slight bulge of muscle visible in his biceps, his ice-blue eyes. There are at least sixty-seven stars visible from the roof of the RV, a little voice in the back of her head says. She catches the beginning of a frown on his brow and realises - speak, woman! - she's making him nervous.

"...do you at least want some company then?"

He raises an eyebrow. "Sure."

She's gone over, in her head, the million-and-one reasons why it would be a terrible, awful idea if she made a move on Daryl. A: he would probably almost definitely reject her, spear her with his crossbow, and string her from his belt. B: even if he didn't, there's the little problem of a couple of million reanimated corpses hungering for their flesh, and it would be just her luck in men that her soulmate was eaten by zombies a few days after they got together. C: Shane. Shane, and his touches, and stares, and whispered remarks in her ear when he thinks no-one else can see them together.

But she trusts herself, here, not to make a rash judgement and jump Daryl in his sleeping bag; and besides, she needs the company. The thought of going back to her tent and spending another night whispering Amy's name in to her pillow, face drenched with tears, is too much to bear. She climbs inside and drops her bag at the tent flap, crouching down to sit cross-legged across from her friend.

"How's your side?" she asks, noticing his wince as he rolls slightly to face her.

"Peachy," he says, deadpan.

"Has Hershel changed the bandage?" she asks, conversationally; and then realises what her follow-up question has to be. "...do you want me to -"

"No," he says, too quickly, too tense. Then he seems to relax, and says, "Can't trust you with a gun, ain't gonna trust you with medical supplies."

She hangs her head. "I'm sorry," she laughs. "Are you going to hold this against me forever?"

"Yeah, probably," he says, moving cautiously on to his side. "I'm a'use it to guilt you in to doin' things for me. Washin' clothes, makin' me food, working on the bike..."

"You would never let anyone near that bike," she chuckles, "Least of all me. I saw the look you gave Dale when he mentioned needing spare parts for the camper."

"Got stuff in those saddlebags that'd curl his hair," Daryl smiles wryly, "Merle had a lot more'n spare parts on that thing."

Andrea smiles. She'd forgotten, for a minute, everything outside the tent that had been troubling her. In her previous life, she was annoyed by things like mortgages, traffic, and her boss' coffee breath. In her life now, she thinks daily about her sister's body. About guns and shooting practice. About far-distant moans and shuffles that she swears carry to her ears on the nighttime breeze.

"Y'alright?" Daryl's voice snaps her away from her train of thought and she realises her face has fallen.

"Yeah," she says, putting her elbows on her knees and propping her chin up on her folded hands. "Just thinking."

"'bout?"

She shakes her head. "Amy. My parents. Jacquie," - and here, her voice drops to a murmur, " - Sophia."

Daryl frowns. "I'm gonna find her," he says.

"I don't doubt it. If anyone could, it's you."

"She's gonna be fine."

"Do you really think so?"

"I know so," he says, eyes steely. "She ain't gonna be like Merle. She ain't gonna be like your sister. I'm gonna find her, and bring her home, and she will be fine."

Andrea's lips curl in to a small smile, but she knows it doesn't meet her eyes. "I hope so," she says, then, "I guess we'll move out once we get her back."

Daryl shrugs. "''spose so."

"It'll be weird leaving," Andrea says. "It's the closest thing to a home that any of us have."

"If you call sleepin' in a tent in someone's yard to be a home."

"You don't seem to mind it," she teases.

"It's comfortable," he shifts the pillow under his head slightly and winces. "'side from the fact that I almost turned my spleen in to a fuckin' popsicle yesterday."

Andrea laughs, genuinely, for the first time in recent memory. Her eyes close and her nose scrunches and she even makes a little giggle-snort noise that Amy used to tease her for. Daryl watches her, a soft half-smile on his lips. She holds back her laughter for a second, ready to make a sarcastic comment on his crossbow-shooting abilities; when she looks up and meets his eyes. He doesn't look any different to the norm, but there's something about the way he's looking at her - the smile, which she rarely sees, the sparkle behind his eyes, which she never sees - that stops her. She opens her mouth and shuts it again, suddenly breathless.

"I wish I could stay," she whispers, and they both know she's not talking about the Greene farm.

His voice is low, so low that she almost thinks she's imagining his response, when he says: "Then stay."

In her mind, the next step always involved frantic kissing and disrobing, and an exploration of whether sleeping bag sex is actually physically possible. But in practice, he doesn't sit up and kiss her passionately, and she doesn't fling her underwear off and leap on top of him: in the half-light of the tent, she follows his instructions on how to find the other blanket - it's in the corner, apparently, no, the other corner, no, that's his vest - and then she's kneeling with the blanket in her hands and trying to figure out where to lay it, because she wants very much to be close to him but he's not moving at all, not welcoming her to him, so she lays the blanket a foot or so away from him and sits on top, fluffing a sweater in to a pillow. She stretches her legs out and lowers herself down on to her side, and he leans forward - slowly, so as not to aggravate his injury - and reaches over her to grab the other side of the blanket.

"Here," he whispers, pulling it over her. His hand rests on her thigh for the briefest of moments before he pulls away.

"Thank you," she says, and she almost dares herself to lean over and kiss him. His eyes are searching hers, looking for what, she doesn't know; and her nerves under his gaze make her want to act to break the tension. She reaches out a hand to touch him and says to herself that if he doesn't pull back, she'll follow that hand with the rest of her body - but he does jump slightly at her touch and she loses her nerve.

"Goodnight," he whispers, and she whispers it back; and the last thing she remembers is watching his blue eyes drift shut in the shadow.

_She feels the change run through her body like a poison - joints stiffening, blood slowing and thickening, limbs almost too heavy and cumbersome to move. All she can think of is how hungry she is, it's a hunger unlike anything else she's ever felt in her life - it's more than a craving, more than a need - it's sheer desparation. Amy's face changes from confused to afraid to completely terrified, and the girl cries Andrea's name in between little shreiks and pants as she walks backwards away from her, hands up._

Andrea opens her mouth to say something, and for some reason she doesn't think it's comforting, it's something like, "I'm going to get you", but instead of words, all that comes out is a ragged moan. She shuffles forward, towards her little sister, arms outstretched - and then the girl is in her arms, struggling and crying, hands coming up to push Andrea away - Andrea and her hungry mouth, her tearing hands, and her vicious fingernails.

There is blood, suddenly, everywhere, and Andrea tastes the coppery tang in her mouth. The figure between her hands struggles less and less as the red flows more and more, and Andrea can't control herself as she feeds. She is covered head-to-toe in thick, sticky blood; a mass of hair wrapped around the fingers of one hand and clumps of viscera in the other. It's delicious, too delicious; and she growls with sated fulfilment as she begins to feel her hunger subside.

By the time she wakes up, she's already screaming.

Her hands instinctively pull the blanket up around her head, seeking protection under the covers like she did when she was young. She burrows there, gasping for breath between sobs, and when she finds her breath she cries herself hoarse in to the sweater-pillow. She feels hands on her and she starts to kick and fight them away, fists flying in every direction, the covers tangled and claustrophobic around her.

"Andrea - Andrea, jesus-fuckin'-christ -" He folds his arms around her in a semi-headlock and holds her still, holds her until she stops fighting and realises where she is.

"Daryl," she whispers, sagging in to his arms, hands coming up to cover her face. She collapses in to his chest, tears flowing.

"What the hell?" He's semi-frantic, running on the adrenaline of being woken up by her thrashing and screaming next to him; but also completely confused. His hand comes up tentatively to rub her back and he wonders for a second what instinct told him to do that. "What is it?"

She shakes her head against his chest, not realising until he almost has to pry her fingers off his shirt that she's gripping on to him. He pulls the blanket out from underneath her to place around her shoulders. "C'mere," he says, softly. "I'm guessin' you had a nightmare."

"I keep having the same one," she hiccups.

"Ain't real," he says, holding her at arm's length, the same way one might hold an opossum if a stranger were to hand it to them in the street.

"God," she whispers, covering her face. "It's almost every night, the same thing, I'm so fucking terrified to go to sleep..."

He pauses. "What is it?"

"It's about Amy," she whispers, face crumpling.

"'bout how she died?"

Andrea nods.

"Well, you saw it happen...it's traumatic. You're gonna re-live it," he says, and hates himself for not being able to think of something more sympathetic to say.

"No," she whispers, between hiccups. "It's different. In the dream it's day time. It's just her and I. ...and I'm the walker, Daryl. I'm the walker."

She folds forward, face in her hands; and he reaches out to her, places a hand on her shoulder tentatively and squeezes.

"Almost every night I have this same dream," she cries, "I'm scared to go to sleep. I'm scared to wake up because it's almost as bad out there as it is in my dream. I'm fucking terrified, Daryl. I'm terrified."

He watches her for a second, lips pressed together, unable to think of a single thing to say. There's no reasoning with her, because ordinarily the stuff of nightmares - ghosts, monsters, things that go bump in the night - stops existing in the light of day. But he can't reason away her sister's death, can't reason away the fact that she saw her mauled and bitten right in front of her, and can't reason away the fact that Andrea feels almost directly responsible. He rubs her back, palm hitching the cotton against her skin as his fingertips brush over the bumps of her spine.

"Sit up," he whispers, and she does, wiping her hands over her face.

He opens his mouth to say something else comforting - what, he doesn't know - but she beats him to it and speaks first, unleashing her fears between gasps. "I lie in my tent every night, terrified to go to sleep because I know exactly what I'm going to see - but it's even worse out there, sometimes I think I can deal with dead bodies so long as I know there's going to be an end to it all, and one day I can say this is just all something that happened to me, some disaster I survived a long time ago, but the longer it goes on the more I think it's never going to end - we could be the only people left in the world, Daryl, we could be the only fucking people left - what chance do we have? What reason do we have for even being here? If we're over-run by those fucking things then it's only a matter of time before our ammo runs out and they get us too; this could be the end of the world. Daryl, we're living in the end of the world. This is too much."

"Take a breath," he says, and she shakily inhales. Her hands are balled in to fists in her lap. She looks up at him, eyes red and filled with tears.

"I don't know what to do," she whispers.

"Look. We're all terrified," he whispers. "Each and every one of us. I can't promise you that there's some safe haven out there that ain't filled with walkers, 'n even if there is I can't promise you we'll find it. We could die tomorrow."

"Daryl -" her lip trembling, she reaches out for him, her hand landing on his upper arm. He wonders briefly how they got this close - if she was any closer to him, she'd be in his lap.

"Listen. I think it was John Wayne who said this thing, about courage - it isn't when you ain't scared to get on the horse, it's when you're scared shitless but you saddle up anyway. You need to saddle up, girl."

Andrea nods, exhaling slowly through pursed lips.

"Saddle up," he says again, force behind his words. He reaches out tentatively and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. "But 'fore you do that, you need to sleep."

She runs her hands over her face, nods against her palms, and runs a hand through her hair. "I'm sorry," she whispers; but he just shakes his head. He's not sure which one of them initiated it - her hand was on his chest pushing him back down but he let himself be pushed, he didn't move away - but he climbs back in to the sleeping bag and she curls up next to him, head on his chest just below his shoulder. Her other hand finds his stomach, and for a few seconds he does consider pulling away from her; but then she's snuggling down in to his side and murmuring little words like 'thank you' and 'sorry' and it's not that he feels too bad for her to push her away, he just feels too much for her.

He wraps his arm around her and holds her tight against his side, surprised at how comfortable and right it begins to feel. Eventually she falls asleep again, her breathing slow and steady, and she doesn't wake up again until the next morning. He wakes at the same time, at dawn, with his nose buried in her hair and her hand noticably lower on him than it was when they fell asleep. She seems as embarrassed as he does, by that, and they mumble their excuses and spend most of the morning apart. It's only later that afternoon, when he's leaving the house after letting Hershel change the bandage on his side, that he walks by her and she slips her hand in to his for the briefest of seconds before continuing on to where she was going.

He turns and watches her go, and she turns as well, their eyes meeting.

_Saddle up_.


	7. 37: Sound

It's Sophia's voice in his head, the first day he goes searching for her.

He could count on one hand the amount of times he'd spoken to her directly, because if Carol was good at keeping her daughter away from the Dixon brothers, then Ed was a fucking expert; but nonetheless, the little screams she let out as she was being chased away from the highway that day echo through his head as he strides through the wood, crossbow at the ready.

Rick suggested they 'think like a lost child' so they could get an idea of where Sophia might have gone, but Daryl doesn't have to pretend, he's been in those shoes before - young and lost; frightened and shivering in the dark woods, starving and sick from drinking muddy water. Those nine days he was gone were stifling in their silence, the only sounds being the chirp of birds and the soft groaning and creaking of the trees. Now, mixed in with the soundtrack of the woods near the Greene farm, he hears Sophia's little yells echoing in his head, pleading for help.

He doesn't stop searching until sundown, when his feet are blistered and arms are aching. He finds some signs but nothing concrete; and when he stomps back in to camp at dinnertime, he's beseiged with questions. Dale, Carol, and T-Dog are sitting around the fire sharing a can of beans, and when Daryl sits down he barely has time to serve himself before Dale is asking if he saw any evidence of note out in the woods, and Carol is encouraging to take off his boots because his feet must ache, and T-Dog is saying wow man, can't believe you spent the whole day out there, did you see any walkers?

"Fuck," Daryl breathes, low, "Is it too much to ask for some peace and fuckin' quiet while I eat?"

Dale raises his eyebrows, Carol looks like he slapped her in the face, and T-Dog just says, "Whoa, man, calm down, it's stressful for all of us."

"Yeah, must be real fuckin' stressful, sittin' here on your ass waiting for her to walk back in to camp," Daryl hisses; and as he gets up he sees in his peripheral vision that T-Dog stands to reply, but Dale holds a hand up and silences him.

As he lies in his tent that night, Daryl swears the last thing he hears before he goes to sleep is Sophia calling out for help; and when he wakes the next morning his jaw aches from grinding his teeth all night.

It's Andrea who enters his head the next day as he searches; not that she's an unfamiliar visitor - he spends a fair amount of time thinking about her, the kind of time that if she knew about, she'd probably never speak to him again. He thinks about her eyes, her lips, and yeah - her body, the sway of her hips and the curve of her breast. He thinks about the few times he's seen her in a state of undress - swimming in the river, getting changed in to fresh laundry by the line outside her tent, or in the RV when she went to take off her sweater but pulled her top up instead, and the flat plane of her stomach was close enough to him that he could have touched it. Should have, if he had any balls; he should have reached out and curved his hands around her hips and never let her go.

He thinks about conversations they've had, and wonders how he's managed to seem so damn normal when talking to her. Only a few times has he hinted about something fucked-up or weird that's happened to him in the past, and she's never cared; never seemed to hold it against him that he was left out in the woods for over a week, or that his brother fed him hallucinogenic mushrooms one Christmas as a joke, or that one day when he came home from school he walked in to the living room and found his mother's body hanging from the rafters. She took that all in her stride, Andrea did.

Sophia has a lot in common with him, he thinks, as he picks through the bushes searching for her track. He's known how it feels to be completely lost and have no-one come searching for you, to be faced with the enormous, overwhelming evidence that no-one in the entire world cares enough to find you when you are gone. He's seen the looks Ed would give her, and seen the hands he laid on her and Carol - but he was never quite brave enough to intervene, was he, just like at home when he was a teenager and he'd overhear whimpering and flesh-hitting-flesh from his parents' bedroom.

The slap of his father's hand hitting his mother's face was the soundtrack to his childhood, playing on repeat like a skipping record. There was nothing else like the feeling of lying there in bed, helpless, but surging with frustration and fear and hatred and the simple fucking agony of being just a boy when what he really needed was to be a man. If he was half as strong as his father, he'd have gotten out of bed and stormed in there, torn him off her and beat him to a pulp - he tried once, flinging the covers off with shaking, adrenaline-fed hands and running down the hallway in his pyjama bottoms and bare feet; ripping open the door and launching himself at them, voice breaking as he yelled. It took mere seconds for his father to pick him up and throw him towards the wall, pain shooting down his jaw as he collided with the brick. He woke up the next morning swollen and bloody, and his incisor has been chipped ever since, and none of Merle's home remedies could do anything about it (he suggested gargling with salt water, which was disgusting; then milk, because they'd seen something in a crime show once about teeth and milk; then Merle said, fuck little bro, let's just get you a drink, and then it was a shot of cooking sherry before bed - and you try not throwing up after drinking salt water, milk, and sherry all night).

He's still haunted by those memories, and they swirl in his head just as Sophia's cries do, and Andrea's friendly comments and private laughs, and the sound of his father's hand hitting his mother's face - and the sounds keep circling, keep drumming in to his skull, until all of a sudden he's being thrown off his horse and down a ravine and straight on to his crossbow bolt, and then there he is, lying in a pool of his own blood, thinking - hey, this may actually be how I die, the world over-run by zombies and I manage to win a Darwin Award.

Merle appears to him then, hazy like a mirage, and what Merle says sounds like what Merle always says. He's always the devil on Daryl's shoulder, always there with a put-down if anyone gives him a compliment, but quick to talk him up when someone's bringing him down. Merle believes he was always there for Daryl and in a way he was, there was always a couch to crash on when things got too rough at home, and always a bag of frozen peas to be held over his black eye in the bathroom while Merle whispered to him to hurry up and get rid of the bruise so they don't ask questions at school. But Merle was always away, disappearing off with friends for a week or being locked up for a month, sitting in his room in a haze of smoke or lying catatonic for days with glass pipes and syringes on his bedside table.

Merle fades in an out of his vision now just like he faded in and out of Daryl's life back then; but he loyally climbs up the incline after his brother's voice, wincing in pain with every breath, blistered hands gripping tree roots and rocks; and when he finally reaches the top Merle is gone. The only sounds left are the birds' tweets and the trees' rustle, until Daryl gets back to camp and a shot cracks through the air, snapping him from his haze and sending him to the ground.

When he awakens, he's lying in a bed upstairs in the Greene's farm, and he briefly thinks that he should go wipe his ass with poison ivy and make himself a sandwich in their kitchen, just to relive old memories. It takes him a while to realise that he can't hear anything at all, partially because his ear is bandaged up and partially because the walls of the house block out the noise from the camp below.

He still hasn't found Sophia, and doesn't realise yet that he never will - when he sees her stiff body shuffle from the barn he will feel a sadness he's never felt before: sad for her death but mourning something else as well, mourning something inside himself that never came home with him after he left the woods that day as a boy. It's definitely gone now, either lost forever or confirmed dead; and as he lies on the bed in the Greene farm, feeling as useless and limp as the Grimes boy who had the bed a week earlier, he wonders if it's really Sophia he's searching for out in those woods, or if it's himself.


	8. 43: Square

_Right over left, twist; left over right, twist. 's a square knot, boy, get it through your thick skull. Now try it again._

Daryl finishes the knot and pushes on the crates he has tied on to the little car. They stand empty at the moment but will be useful should the need arise for a large amount of supplies to be brought back from the town - which, given the drop in food and in Hershel's medical supplies, may be very soon.

"That's good," Andrea says, tugging on the rope.

"It's a knot," Daryl says, frowning. "You ain't never seen a knot before?"

"No, I have," she says, "But I like looking at all the different ones. You know, loop knot, sailor's knot, merchant's knot..."

"I'm pretty sure only one o' those is an actual knot," he interrupts.

"Yeah, well," Andrea shrugs. "My Dad taught me a few when I was a kid. Amy tried to teach me some when she was in the Girl Guides. I was never very good at it."

She picks up a loose piece of rope from the ground and begins to twist it. "I know this one..." she says, holding up the finished product.

"'A butterfly knot," Daryl says. He tugs the rope between his hands and the knot falls apart. "Not a very good one, at that."

Andrea scrunches her nose and he softens. "Here, I'll show you this. It's useful, pay attention."

He steps forward to her and holds out the rope that he's holding, and grasps the rope she's holding. She is close, so close that if he were to look up, their faces would be inches apart. He can see, from this angle, the collarbones that jut out of her chest, the smooth skin of her shoulders, and her cleavage, slightly visible above the line of her tank top. He tries to avert his eyes.

"Carrick Bend," he says, and moves the ropes slowly so her eyes can follow. _Make a loop. Now: over, under, over, under, over; put this end around this loop - Jesus, Daryl, how fuckin' difficult is this? It ain't symmetrical. Again!_ "...like that."

She laughs and shakes her head. "I'm lost." He's so close to her that he can feel the breath behind her words.

"Okay. How 'bout this - it's a bowline, real simple. One of the best knots to know. Creates a loop at the end of a line. Watch."

_Okay, make a loop. Don't fuck it up this time. Bring this end up and put it through the loop from the other side - the other side, boy - now wrap it around the standing line and through the loop again. Don't stand there lookin' at me like a smacked mackrel, come on -_

"Wait, how did you -" Andrea cuts herself off and reaches for the rope. Her hands skim over Daryl's as she tries to retrace his steps with the knot. He sucks in a quick breath and drops the rope, hands falling to his side. Andrea bends down to retrieve it. "...sorry."

He shrugs. "Ain't that important anyway."

"No, it's useful." She plays with the rope between her hands. "Hey, I'll show you one I do know?"

Daryl nods.

"Come here," she says, smiling at him. She sun is behind him and she squints in to it, long lashes falling over her bright green eyes. Daryl doesn't find it hard to understand why Merle warmed to her so quickly when he met her. He approaches her slowly, hands in pockets. "Put your hands out."

He warily extends his hands, wrists facing down. Swiftly, she places the rope underneath them then makes a loop on one side. She brings the loop over to the other side and does something to create a knot, which she then pulls tight around his wrists. Realising too late what she is up to, his heart rate immediately quickens.

_Jesus fuckin' Christ Daryl, it's a simple fuckin' knot, how hard is it? Your shoes ain't gonna tell you anything, boy, stop staring at 'em - your brother never had any trouble with this, don't know what it is about you; maybe he's the one who got all the brains in the family because it sure as shit wasn't you. Dumber than a box of fuckin' rocks, you are, I tell you what -_

Daryl pulls his hands apart as hard and quick as he can, as if he'd been scalded with boiling water. He expects to have to tear the rope off but to his surprise, it simply falls to the ground. He stares at the rope and then looks back up at Andrea, heart pounding.

"...it's a magician's knot," she says, weakly. "It looks like a knot but when you pull it, it vanishes...it's a magic trick."

"I don't fuckin' like being tied up," he shouts. "What the fuck?"

"Sorry," she says, bending down for the rope. "Here."

He shakes his head. "Don't need it. Keep it. Try ropin' some of those walkers next time and make yourself useful. Lord. Now leave me be, I'm busy. 'nless you wanna be the one making sure we have something to carry our supplies back from town in. But if we left it to you, these things'd fall off halfway outta the gate."

"Okay, okay, I'm sorry, alright?" Andrea hisses. She stalks away in the direction of the farmhouse and he watches her disappear through the car window from the other side.

_Nice fuckin' going, Dixon._


	9. 60: Drink

Daryl lifts the flask to his lips and takes a sip. After watching his daddy grow up with a bottle basically surgically attached to his hand, he's never been a big drinker, but he can appreciate a drop or two here and there. When he left home with Merle god-knows-how-long-ago, the first things he saw Merle put in to the panniers of his bike was a few back issues of Hustler, his drug stash, and a full flask of alcohol. Daryl had to hand him a backpack full of food, water bottles, and toilet paper; and even then he barely saw his brother open the damn thing.

On a night like tonight, though, Daryl's thankful for his brother's unusual necessities. It's a cold night, he's been thinking too much; and he could use both a distraction from his thoughts and something to warm him up now that the fire's died down. He's fairly certain by the taste of the liquid that it was one of Merle's special home-brews, but he figures that his brother drunk it for years and never went blind, so he should be okay to drink it this once.

He's a few sips in when he sees Andrea approaching from the direction of the farmhouse, a linen bag in one hand.

"Hey," she calls, ducking under the string of vermin and walker-ears he has strung up around his camp.

Daryl inclines his head and raises the flask as a way of greeting. "You come to see if I've got laundry?"

"No," Andrea says, hands on hips. "I actually came to ask if you wouldn't mind shooting me with that crossbow of yours, preferably in the hand or arm, so I wouldn't be forced in to collecting laundry any longer."

"Here," Daryl holds the flask out, laughing. "Drink?"

Andrea pauses for a second then shrugs. She drops the laundry bag to the ground. "Sure," she says, "Why not?"

She sits down next to him, her shoulder against his, and he takes a nervous breath. She smells of laundry powder and bleach, and her t-shirt is flecked slightly with water. Her arm feels warm and soft against his, and from this angle her skin shines softly in the moonlight. Her hair is pulled back away from her face, and he watches her eyes shut as she tilts the flask up to take a mouthful. She swallows, and he watches the muscles in her neck move, shadows dancing over the smooth skin of her throat and collarbones. When she finally looks up at him, he takes a nanosecond to run his eyes over her full lips, the contours of her jaw, and her light green eyes that sparkle softly. Then he clears his throat and turns away.

"Yikes," she says, obviously unaware of his study of her, "That's some strong stuff."

"Pretty sure Merle made it," he says, as she coughs.

"Made it?"

"Yeah, he used to make all kind'a stuff in our shed. Never really took much notice of most of it."

"Man," Andrea whistles, low. "So. What are you drinking for tonight?"

Daryl shrugs. "Do I need a reason?"

"I guess not. Not these days." He hands the flask back to her and she takes another, smaller sip.

They sit for a few minutes in companionable silence, sharing the flask between them, before Andrea asks, "Truth or dare?". When Daryl turns to look at her, she's smiling.

"Truth or dare?" He repeats, and she nods. "Ain't that a kids' game?"

"Not if we drink while we're playing it."

Daryl shrugs. He's never been a fan of drinking games but he is a fan of sitting here with her, drinking together, her arm against his and her foot lightly touching his boot. Merle's brew is giving him courage, he decides, and he doesn't want to abandon this chance while he has it. "Truth," he says at last.

"Okay. Um, truth," Andrea says, biting her lower lip as she thinks. "Alright. Out of all the contraband that Merle brought with him, how much have you actually used?"

"Just the flask," Daryl says, definitively.

"Really? You never used any of his antibiotics?" Andrea makes quotation marks with her fingers as she says 'antibiotics'.

"Nah," Daryl says, "Not my scene."

Andrea smiles. "He didn't bring any dirty magazines or anything with him?"

"Okay, your turn," Daryl interrupts, and Andrea laughs. "What'll it be?"

"Dare," Andrea says, still laughing.

"Bet'cha can't hit that birds nest with my crossbow," Daryl says, pointing towards an empty birds' nest a few trees down.

"That's not really a dare," Andrea says, "But I bet I can. Where is it?"

As she squints in to the darkness, he leans closer and moves so she can follow the line of his arm with her eyes. "There," he says. He places a hand on her knee as she searches in the darkness where his finger points.

"I see," she says, and jumps up. Daryl instantly folds himself back to a relaxed position and she grabs the crossbow, hoisting it up to her shoulder. She squares her jaw and squints as she focuses on her target, then pulls the trigger. The bolt leaves the bow with a 'twang' and, sure enough, lands squarely in the side of the birds' nest, which proceeds to fall out of the tree and on top of T-Dog's tent, below.

"What the fuck?" T-Dog shouts, and they see a torch flick on from within the canvas.

Laughing, Andrea falls back to sitting position next to Daryl. She is cross-legged this time and her knee falls just under his. "I seriously did not think I would hit that!"

"Nicely done," he says.

"Shane showing me how to shoot really paid off," she laughs, and Daryl frowns; but she misses it and continues. "Truth or dare?"

"Dare," he says, taking another sip from the flask.

"Oh, damn it," Andrea says, "I had a good truth question."

Daryl just raises and eyebrow and she laughs, taking the flask from him for another drink.

"Okay okay, dare," she says. "Alright, I dare you to skoll the rest of this."

Daryl shakes the flask in his hand, there's not that much left in there. He shrugs and downs it in one, breathing through the burning sensation in his throat as he tips the flask up-side down. "Like that?"

Andrea nods. "I'm impressed, Dixon. Didn't take you for that much of a drinker."

"Truth or dare," he says, voice husky. From the alcohol, he says to himself. It's from the alcohol.

"Truth," she says.

"Okay," he swallows. "Did Shane ever do more than just show you how to shoot?"

"Dare," Andrea says, before he can finish.

"Can't do that," he says, "You have to answer."

"No I don't, I can choose a dare if I don't want to!"

"Fine," Daryl says, and he can feel himself getting angry. "I dare you to tell me if Shane ever did more than just show you how to shoot."

"Jesus, Daryl," she says, turning to look at him. He curses himself for ever mentioning it. Of course Shane did more with her than teach her how to shoot, who wouldn't? If he had the guts to get her alone in the woods for a few hours, and the guts to make a move on her, he would have too. "I'm not Lori, okay? I'm not fucking married and neither is Shane, we can do whatever we want."

"Forget I asked," he says, shaking his head. "I don't care."

He pushes the heel of his boot down in the dirt and watches the intentation that it makes. His limbs feel warm and jelly-like, the alcohol is taking effect. Andrea is silent next to him, and then she whips her head around to look at him. "Okay, truth - out of everyone in the camp, who would you sleep with if you had the chance, then?"

"No-one," he says.

She rolls her eyes. He can smell the alcohol on her breath. "Okay, so presuming the only people left on Earth are the people on this farm right now, you wouldn't sleep with any of them."

"Well, there's no point in me telling you," he says at last. She is sitting close to him, his line of vision is taken up by her furrowed brow and her steely eyes - she's angry, or confused, he reasons.

"Why not?"

"'cause."

"'cause why?" She has turned to face him completely and one of her hands is behind him, on the log they're resting against. She's closer to him now that she's ever been before, and she's pissed - Daryl shakes his head, of course he would get this chance to be alone with her and then fuck it up royally.

"Just because, alright? Drop it."

"Tell me!"

He turns to her, their faces are inches apart. He can feel his cheeks burning. "Because I'm pretty sure that the person I'd choose has already chosen Shane, that's why!"

Andrea's expression instantly changes. She goes from looking furious, to looking puzzled, to looking hurt, in the space of about a millisecond. She bites her lip. "...is it Lori?"

"It's not Lori." Daryl turns away from her, he doesn't want to look at her. He's entertaining a fantasy of packing up his tent in the middle of the night, getting on Merle's bike and driving until he finds the biggest pack of walkers he can, then putting a bullet through every one of their skulls; and never returning to the Greene farm again.

"Daryl," Andrea whispers, next to him. She's still facing him. His mind is racing a million miles an hour with thoughts of how he has totally fucked this up, how everyone in camp will know what he said by the morning and how they'll all watch him with their judgemental eyes, wondering why he would ever have thought that he'd be good enough for Andrea. Beautiful, smart, funny, sexy Andrea, Andrea who hates doing laundry and wouldn't put up with any of Merle's crap, Andrea who can take down walkers without flinching, Andrea who just walks around camp all day in those same jeans she always wears, in a top she hasn't changed for days, and still manages to look so goddamn appealing that Daryl just wants to grab her, push her up against the side of the house, and kiss her until his lips are raw. Which is obviously what Shane has beaten him to doing. Because Shane has confidence, and balls, and Daryl never will.

"Daryl," Andrea whispers again. "Truth or dare."

Daryl thinks that this is getting ridiculous, the only possible dare he'd want to perform right now is finding a part of the Earth that will swallow him up whole. "Dare," he says, anyway.

She is silent for a minute, and he slowly turns to her, almost unable to meet her eyes. Her breathing is heavy and uneven. "Kiss me," she whispers.


	10. 70: Storm

Andrea gasps as thunder claps above them, seeming to shake the very ground that they're standing on. She looks up to the sky in time to see lightning flash - it illuminates the area around them, showing the ground, muddy and wet; and the trees, which have almost as much moisture dripping from them as the sky does. She laughs softly and pushes Daryl's shirt open, running her hands up his chest.

"I fuckin' love storms," he says, reaching out for her tank top and pulling it up and over her head. "Jesus. Look at you."

Completely bare-chested, she leans up against the tree, laughing. "Look at you," she says, grabbing his belt and pulling him closer to her. He leans down and kisses her deeply, lips wet with rain, and she moans in to his mouth as he slips his hand inside her jeans.

"Yes," she whispers against him, pushing against his hand, "Please Daryl..."

He undoes the buttons roughly with a whisper of, "Open your legs." She pushes the now-soaking denim down her legs and he finds her entrance with two fingers, sliding them quickly inside. Her head falls back against the tree and she releases a shaky breath.

His fingers work in and out of her quickly, there is a time for slow and sensual and this - up against a tree, covered in rain and mud, on the way back from a hunting expedition they had to cancel due to weather - is not it. Her moans are masked by a brief thunder clap, and then he can hear her again, hear her say his name, hear her urge him on and beg for more.

Knees shaking, she reaches out and grabs for him, looking for something to anchor her. "Fuck me," she says, pulling at the waistband of his jeans.

He bats her hand away. "I like watching this," he says, with a smirk.

"Daryl - please," she pants.

He moves in close to her, one arm around her shoulders, his leg between hers. "As much as it fuckin' turns me on to hear you say that," he whispers, against her ear, and feels her squeeze around his fingers, "I'm gonna make you come like this first," (she whimpers) "...and then I'm gonna push you up against this tree and fuck you so hard that you're gonna scream. Okay?"

He doesn't wait for her to respond, just leans down and bites a trail down her neck. She moans in to his ear, breath quickening. "Come on baby," he whispers, as he watches her eyes roll back in her head. He reaches down and runs a hand along his own length, painfully hard inside his jeans, but so worth the wait. He bends his fingers inside her slightly and she releases a soft scream. Her hands grab for him as she climaxes, shaking, gasping his name as he keeps up the rhythym of his hand.

"Fuck," she pants, as he finally slows, "Oh my god, Daryl..." Her thighs are slick, she has no idea if it's with rainwater or not. No sooner has she caught her breath than he is lifting her up against the tree and pushing in to her, relishing the feeling of her wet warmth around him.

"Feels so goddamn good," he says, his forehead meeting hers.

"Come on," she whispers, urging him to move. Above them, the rain begins to fall even harder, pelting them both with ice cold water. "That's it, honey."

She wraps her legs around his waist and he slams in to her; he couldn't be any deeper inside her if he tried. She uses his shoulder to muffle her moans but he wraps a hand in her ponytail and moves her head up, he wants to hear her.

"You like how that feels?" he says, pulling all the way out and then sliding in again. She just nods, gasping. "I said, do you like that?"

"Yes," she pants, "Jesus, yes."

He speeds up his thrusts again, pounding in to her, then grabs her hand. "Hands above your head," he whispers, and she obeys, putting both hands above her head. He takes them in one of his hands and holds them tight. "'m I gonna make you come again?"

She nods.

"What?" he asks, and she gasps for breath.

"Yes you are," she says, shaking. He thrusts in her to the hilt, then rocks his hips against hers. Back and forward against her pubic bone he rocks, watching her face as her mouth opens in a silent scream. "Fuck, fuck - oh my god -"

True to his promise, she screams his name as she climaxes, mouth against his neck. He releases her hands as her breathing returns to semi-normal and they instantly find a place on him, urging his hips up against hers. He's so close already, and he feels his climax pool low in his stomach as he continues to thrust up in to her. His hand finds her ass and squeezes the flesh there as he pushes in to her a final time, knees shaking as he growls her name. He stills against her for a few seconds and then they sag against the tree, drenched in rainwater and entirely spent.

"Jesus," he says, pulling out of her. The thunder claps above them again and unleashes a new torrent of rain.

"I don't think I can walk," Andrea says, laughing, leaning against the tree. She bends to pull her jeans up and struggles with the wet fabric, muscles weak.

Daryl struggles in to his clothes as well and then hands her his jacket, the only thing that stayed somewhat dry. She shrugs it on and peers at him from within the oversized garment. "Nice work," she says, with a quirk of her eyebrow.

"Weren't so bad yourself," Daryl says, inclining his head; then with a laugh: "Scared of storms...fuckin' a!"


	11. 73: Light

In the stifling afternoon air of his tent, Andrea presses herself up against him. She feels small in his arms, but her size is no indication of her strength - beneath her soft skin she is flexing muscle, lithe, like a cat. Her hair is soft and slightly wet, all pulled back from her face, and smelling lightly of soap. Sometimes, in front of the fire or across the camp, he will look at her - the curve of her body, her brilliant smile - and think that like the sun, she is almost too much to look directly at. And then there are times like these when she comes to him, crawls in to his arms and kisses him, or just lays next to him in the tent, talking - and he thinks this is definitely all too much for him. Soon, he tells himself, she'll realise who and what he is, and the light that she casts in to his existence will flicker out.

For now, though, he has her to himself - brilliant, funny, intelligent Andrea - hair the colour of the sun. Whatever momentary insanity she must be under the grip of has brought her here, to his tent, where she lies curled with him underneath a thin blanket they had found. Here, she runs her hands over the tattoos on the plane of his shoulder and pulls him closer towards her, their bodies moving against each other, tongues flickering as her lips swipe against his. For all his prowess with a weapon and unshakable confidence around walkers, he can't help but feel nervous around her. She's not like the women he had seen back home at all - they belonged in the cover of low lights and the dark bars where he drunk with his brother; they were limp hair and gangly limbs, too-short skirts and nicotine-stained fingers. She is sun-kissed and smiling, lying with him in the tent sharing her observations on the world as the afternoon light dances across the skin; making comments that surprise him and make him laugh before finally sliding her leg over his and pulling him in to her.

Today is one of the rare occasions when he's given her hands free reign (he prefers to hold them in his when they kiss, the less they can wander, the better) and she takes advantage of it, running her fingers through the sparse hair on his chest, dancing them along the top of his waistband, and threading them through his hair. He sighs against her lips as she rocks her hips against his; he's hard in her jeans and she can feel it, he's sure. She breaks the kiss and his eyes flicker open, meeting hers: they are bright with lust, above her lips slightly parted.

"I think you're wearing too many clothes," she whispers, fingering the button of his jeans. He makes a small, non-committal noise, and kisses her again; taking her hand in his and moving it back to his shoulder. She perseveres. "Let's take these off...?"

"Mm. Don't," Daryl whispers against her mouth.

"Why not...?"

He shakes his head but says nothing, and kisses her again. He always said to himself that when it came down to the line, he'd rather push her away and have her think he doesn't like her, than let her get too close; but who was he actually kidding? He feels powerless in her orbit.

She decides to try a different line to take things further, and unzips her fly slowly, guiding his hand down. Heart racing in his chest, his hand ghosts over her underpants, fingers tracing a pattern over the fabric. This is okay, he thinks, as she settles in the crook of his arm. This is managable. She reaches over to squeeze the bulge in his pants and he draws a shaky breath; hand stilling on her hip as she works the zipper down.

"Ah..." he begins, as he feels the fabric slide down over his behind, but she covers his lips with hers and swallows whatever he was about to say. His fingers can't help but press in to her hip as she rubs him through his underpants, and when she finally slips her fingers past the elastic, he grabs her wrist. "Wait...".

"You okay?"

He's silent for so long, trying to find the words, that he actually considers lying and faking some huge confession to her - I'm actually gay, I have a horrible incurable STI, I need you to wear a full-body latex suit before I can consider having sex with you. Instead, he just steels himself - it's the end of the world, how much worse can it get? - and with what he tells himself is a perfectly calm and casual voice, says, "Never had anyone's hand on me but my own".

She stills. "...this is your first time?" He's searching for a response, an excuse to wash away the feeling of what a fucking loser he is at this very moment in time, and also trying to convince himself that his hand is not actually trembling; when she kisses him again, deeply, and slides her hand in to his underpants fully to grasp his erection. He gasps against her mouth as she starts to slide her hand up and down, slowly at first, squeezing him lightly in her palm.

"Is that okay?" she whispers, and all he can do is nod.

"Ah, yes. Don't stop."

Now or never - he pushes her panties down and dips his hand between her legs, swearing under his breath as his fingers meet the warmth there. He strokes his fingers backwards and forwards slowly before she reaches down and pushes them inside of her, gasping as she's filled. At the same time as he tries to control his breath, he's attempting to silence the thousand or so thoughts running through his mind at freight-train speed: primarily, he's thinking that this is Andrea he's with, Andrea, Andrea who he had fantasized about a thousand times over in his tent alone, first thinking about her mouth doing amazing, wicked things to him, and then just thinking about that mouth smiling or whispering secrets to him. Then, he realises with a start that Glenn has more experience in this department than he does, as evidenced by the twelve-pack of rubbers he had found in the Greene's bathroom after Glenn walked cheerily out of there one morning, followed suspiciously by Maggie. And finally, he's trying desperately to silence the voice in the back of his head that sounds so much like Merle, or his father, telling him that he's going to fuck this up spectacularly and be a huge disappointment to her, and why doesn't he just give up now because -

"Jesus; fuck," he whispers against her mouth as she squeezes his balls in one hand, massaging. She giggles against his lips.

"That okay?" she asks.

"Mmm," he sighs, "Yeah."

"I don't want to rush you or anything," she purrs softly, withdrawing her hand and placing it on his chest as she rolls him over and pushes herself on top, "But I really want -"

"Daryl?" Rick. "Daryl!"

Fuck, fuck, fucking hell. Daryl freezes and Andrea sits up, the blanket sliding off her shoulders.

"...yeah?" he responds, trying to ignore the fact that his voice ends in a pitch ten octaves too high.

"Randall, Daryl," Rick says, and he sees the man's boots walk by the tent in silhouette. "Come on, get up. I need you, man."

"...coming," he responds, and they listen as Rick's boots stomp away from the tent. On his chest, Andrea makes a small whimpering noise and collapses against him.

"I gotta go," he says, as she rolls off him.

"I know, I know. Rick," she says, with a roll of her eyes.

"Let me take care of this," he says, a hand on her exposed stomach. "When I'm done, will you still...?"

"Yeah," she says, softening. "Of course. Come back quick."

As he leaves the tent that afternoon, squinting in to the sunlight; he doesn't know what lies next for them all. The night ahead of them will feel like it stretches on forever, an eternity of mud and bullets, fire and flesh. He will see limb torn from limb, bright red blood staining the ground, and thick black walker blood on his boots. He will pull Carol from the clutches of the walkers, her long limbs threading around his waist as he powers them away from the farm on Merle's bike; and he will try to ignore her whispers against his ear. The next morning as the sun finally rises, it will be as though someone flicked a switch - the day is overcast and grey, the air seemingly full of gunpowder.

Andrea will not travel with them the next day, nor will she for a good month or two. He doesn't know as he walks away from the tent that he will need to light the next several weeks with his memories of her, and rely solely on fond thought and faith that he never knew it was possible to have, that she not only made it away from the farm alive, but that she will make her way back to him. Optimism is easy in theory, perhaps. His hands carry the black dust from his crossbow and he wipes them off on his jeans before swiping a hand across his face to wipe away the beaded sweat on his brow. A smear of black dust settles on his skin.

The Carols and Glenns of this world may have an easy time with faith, but Daryl Dixon wasn't made for positive thinking. He glances briefly over his shoulder at his tent as he walks away from it; not knowing this is the last time he will see it, not knowing most of the earthly possessions he has will be burnt to cinders by this time tomorrow.

"It'll be okay in the end," Rick says as they walk towards the barn, clapping him on the shoulder; giving him a knowing look.

"Yeah," Daryl says, but although his feet propel him forward, he can't bring himself to really agree.

He doesn't have Rick's optimism.

His outlook is much darker than that.


	12. 78: Where?

Guilt, he would say, is what he feels most. Followed by regret...anger...culbability...he feels responsible for her being left behind, responsible for whatever fate she met. He was so quick to go out and take down the walkers at the farm, so quick to get Carol on to his bike and make sure she was safe, that he neglected to think of Andrea. He always assumed she was just with the others, helping to keep them safe; he never thought that she might need help. They all thought she was 'with someone else' until it became clear that she wasn't - and now where is she?

On the first night that they make camp after leaving the farm, Daryl consoles himself with the thought that no-one actually saw her injured or bitten. Or dead. She was tough, no doubt about it, and handy with a weapon. He had shown her how to hunt, how to find water...maybe she is okay, after all. Maybe she is out there in the woods somewhere, completely fine, living off the land, just like he would if he was in the same position. Or maybe she never got the chance to escape in to the woods. Maybe she never left the farm. Maybe...

There are too many maybes, Daryl thinks, too many what-ifs. The most likely outcome is that he'll never see her again, he rationalises. The most likely outcome is that she never made it away from the farm because she's dead. And even if she didn't die that night, there's still starvation, exposure, and dehydration to consider. How long can someone live out in the woods, with virtually nothing? He thinks of his younger self getting lost alone in the woods, and his older self camping out there for fun. It's not too hard to find water or food...but then again, when he was camping, there were never walkers to worry about.

The next morning, Daryl and T-Dog are sent out to find fuel and whatever meagre supplies they can scavenge, and if T-Dog notices Daryl tearing strips off his shirt and tying them to lamp-posts on the way back to their camp, he doesn't ask why. Nobody asks why, actually, when Daryl rips another strip off his shirt and leaves it on top of one of the broken-down walls that formed their perimetre, held in place by a rock. As he steps on to his bike, he watches the fabric waving in the breeze. If she comes by this way, he reasons, she'll see it. She'll know.

It only takes a couple of days for Carol to approach and ask him if he's okay, ask why he's so reserved. As he looks up in to her dark eyes he decides that he hates her. He hates her mothering, hates her constant attention, hates her neediness and refusal to let him be. She'd have been dead in a second if he didn't go back for her and take her to the others on his bike. She had no ability in the woods, no idea how to use a gun, and her skill set extends mostly to doing laundry and preparing powdered eggs. If he hadn't had to rescue her, he thinks, Andrea would be here. It's as simple as that. If he hadn't been preoccupied taking care of Carol, it would have been Andrea on that bike. He would not have left without her.

He dismisses her thoughtlessly and goes back to keeping watch. He always volunteers to keep watch now, looking out over the road and fields for any sound or sign of movement. Any rustle in the bushes, any swaying of tall grass - it could be her, following his trail, making her way back to him. To them, he corrects himself, to them. Because after knowing that he left her, could she really look him in the eyes again?

His eyes are starting to look bloodshot and bruised, and Rick comments one morning that he can take first watch, to let Daryl get some shut eye. It's then that his resentment passes to Rick. Rick, who dissuaded him from turning back; Rick, who has decided he's going to run the group like the Sultan of fucking Brunei without a care for anyone else's opinion. He has a begrudging respect for the man and the decisions he's made, but can't warm to his heartlessness, can't see the world in the same black-and-white view that he does. It's easy for Rick to go around like he doesn't have a care in the world, he has his son and his wife with him. But what about Daryl? Merle still could be back in Atlanta getting chewed apart by walkers for all he knows. Andrea could be lying dead in the woods. But so long as Rick has Carl and Lori, he's happy.

Eventually they move on again, and Daryl leaves another piece of his shirt tied to a tree. Half his shirts are starting to look like they've been mangled by wolves, but he can't bring himself to care. He scans the landscape again before they pull away, looking for - what? Does he think she's going to appear over the horizon, running towards him in a white gown like in some kind of fucking romance novel? He knows exactly what his brother would say at this point - she's dead, dickweed, move on - but he can't. He lies alone in his tent that night, unable to sleep. He thinks often about going back for her, just turning his bike around and leaving the group without a word, but then he thinks of Merle, thinks of Sophia - he tried to find them, and what? Neither of them are here. Sophia's dead. He searched day after day for that little girl and it never mattered. Merle, at least, is tough enough to survive on his own...he never needed Daryl. Neither does Andrea, probably, he reasons. No matter if he looks for her or stays with the group, it won't make a lick of difference. Useless as tits on a bull, is what Merle had once said to Daryl during an argument; and that's exactly how he feels right now.

He rolls on to his side, and watches the night turn to day through the wall of his tent.

They keep moving on and on, towards what, none of them know; and Daryl keeps leaving little signs for her - torn fabric, food wrappers tied together, rocks in the shape of an arrow. He's midway through tearing the a strip off his tent-flap one morning when Glenn crouches down next to him, claps a hand on his shoulder, and says, "Dude. Just write her a note". In his hand is a piece of note paper and a pen.

So he does.

_Andrea -  
If you read this, we're heading East.  
We didn't mean to leave you.  
Stay safe. Please try to find us.  
- Daryl._

"Is that all you have to say to her?" Glenn asks, from over Daryl's shoulder.

Daryl swats Glenn away, irritated, and looks back at the note. He frowns, then picks up the pen again.

_I love you._


	13. 85: She

Andrea watches Carol as she crosses the field, a small plate in her hand, heading towards Daryl's tent.

She's noticed the friendship that the two seem to have recently - not that she particularly cares, of course, because she considers Daryl a friend and therefore wants the best for him, and she gets the feeling from him that he hasn't been close with too many people in his life, so she's glad to see him opening up more - and wondered occasionally what exactly Carol feels for him. She's seen the woman's eyes rest on him while the group was sitting around the fire at night, and seen her look away as soon as he looks in her direction. Andrea understands how Carol must feel after losing Ed - sad, of course, but finally free, and realising that there are other men out there in the world...better men than Ed was. And with her daughter being missing, Carol is obviously feeling lost, and in need of some kind of friendship or affection - and Daryl's effort to find her daughter and insistance on doing the right thing by the little girl, even when no-one else in the group seems to be overly concerned about her whereabouts, must be very welcome.

Andrea considers Daryl to be one of the people she's closest with in the camp, and while they may not be glued to each other's side twenty-four seven, she knows she can look over at Daryl any time and he'll generally be thinking the same thing she is. She can give him a look and know that he'll understand immediately what she means; or sit by the fire in companionable silence with him as the embers burn down and leave feeling like she's had the best conversation in the world. That's her friendship with Daryl, and if Carol sees the same qualities in him that she does - and is able to recognise that he's not a bad-looking guy, Andrea has of course noticed that - then she's happy to lend Carol her friend.

She smiles to herself as Daryl looks up from his seated position by the bike and the two begin conversing, oblivious to Andrea's presence across the grass. Andrea thumbs the two protein bars she has in her pocket - she was going to bring one to Daryl but if Carol spent all that time preparing him lunch...it can wait. Carol gives him a little wave farewell and heads back up towards the farm house, spinning once on her heel as she goes - she stops still and watches him for a few moments, then turns again and continues on with her day.

Andrea wonders, later on in her tent that night, if Daryl is aware that Carol might have the smallest crush on him. He's always seemed fairly oblivious to matters involving the fairer sex, but maybe he's noticed the little glances and gestures...no. Surely not. Andrea is almost certain that Carol's feelings wouldn't be reciprocated, so she hopes for the woman's sake that Daryl hasn't noticed. Andrea rolls over in her sleeping bag, eyes closed, restful. Daryl is keeping watch tonight, on top of the RV, and she always sleeps that little bit sounder knowing that he's watching over her. And the rest of the camp, of course. She's midway through wondering if Daryl has ever had a girlfriend (the girl would have to get used to ironing a lot of sleeveless shirts, Andrea thinks) when she drifts off to sleep, a smile on her lips.

The next night, as she steps back out on to the highway with Daryl after three fruitless hours of combing the woods for Sophia, she can't help but feel a pang of resentment towards Carol. Carol is no less fit, no less intelligent, and no less capable than Andrea, but was she out in the woods with Daryl? Was she putting herself in danger? No. Andrea slips her gun in to the back of her jeans, frowning, as she crosses the highway towards the RV. She can see Dale keeping watch on the roof and Carol's small frame next to him. She thinks briefly that maybe Carol should centre her attentions on finding her missing daughter rather than preparing lunch for certain camp members, then realises, no - that's petty; and when Carol sadly climbs down the ladder and whispers, "No luck?" Andrea squeezes her arm and says that they can try again tomorrow.

They wearily climb back in to the RV and Carol goes straight to bed, pulling the blankets over her face. A muffled hiccup here and there is the only indication that there are more than two people in the camper.

"Must be tired," Daryl says, nodding at Andrea.

"I am," she says. "I'll finish this -" she reaches for the gun she was cleaning, still lying in pieces on the table, but he shakes his head.

"Don't need it tonight. Go to bed. Get some sleep, you look like hell."

Andrea laughs. "Thanks. I feel like it," she goes to pull her baggy top off and realises, as she has it over her shoulders, that it's stuck to her tank top beneath. She laughs again, slightly awkwardly, and pulls the tank top down to cover her abdomen. She catches, for the briefest of seconds, Daryl's eyes on her midsection.

They lock eyes directly when he looks up from her waist, and she feels her face flush as he looks away quickly.

"I'm...going to sleep," she says, finally, breaking the silence.

"Cool," Daryl sits down heavily at the table and reaches for his gun, finishing Andrea's job. "'night."

"Goodnight..." she heads toward the bed and then turns back. "Where are you going to sleep?"

He shrugs. "Floor?"

"Will you be comfortable?"

"Comfortable as I can be."

"...okay, well let me know if you want to switch and I can keep watch while you take the bed," she pushes aside the other suggestion that pops in to her head. "Goodnight."

She falls asleep eventually, Daryl's soft breathing from the floor lulling her in to slumber.

It's a few days later when she ventures out with Shane, trigger finger itchy from target practice. They're chased by walkers - besieged by them, to be exact - but she points the gun, aims the barrel, and takes them down with a number of satisfying bangs and splats. They don't find Sophia but Andrea's mind couldn't be further from that as she jumps in to the car; flying down the highway with Shane next to her, she realises she's shaking. And for the first time since this - all of this chaos - happened, it's not from fear.

She turns her head slowly to him and he turns to her, a smile across his face. She laughs, giddily, shocked at her own prowess with a weapon; and he laughs too, running on the same high she's feeling. She looks away for a second and then back to him, studying him, taking him in. He's so alive and there and masculine - not like Dale, forever watching over her shoulder and playing Dad, not like Rick who's been floating around the farm in a blood-drawn haze; and even unlike Daryl, who is deadly with a crossbow and who she once saw snap a deer's neck with his bare hands, but is still skittish and flinches when she steps too close to him while speaking or puts a hand on his arm in conversation. Shane is raw, spontaneous, uncaring...Andrea realises suddenly how pent-up she feels, and what a much-needed release it was standing down those walkers with a gun in her hand.

Before she can stop herself, she reaches out and cups Shane through his pants; adrenaline telling her to act now and think later.

He turns to her and chuckles. She feels him slow the car down, hears him say something; and then before she knows it she's on top of him, pushing her hips against his, his teeth around her bottom lip and his hands down her jeans. She climaxes bent awkwardly around the front seat, his hand down the front of her underpants and his cock between her lips. He's soon to follow, moaning as he releases in to her mouth. She swallows quickly and when he catches his breath, he wraps a hand in her hair and pulls her mouth up towards him. She kisses him deeply; and tastes salt, sweat, and saliva. When she's finally back in her own seat, he rests his hand on the inside of her thigh for the rest of the journey, and she realises with a flush that the interior of the little car smells strongly of sex.

They pull in to the gates of the farm and up to the farmhouse, where Carol sits despondent on the porch steps. Daryl is a few feet away, sharpening his knife. He raises an eyebrow to the car as they pull in but she guesses he can see in to the back seat - they're alone. He doesn't get up. Carol performs a little half-run, half-shuffle on her way to the car but slows when she sees Sophia doesn't get out. She turns away without a word to Shane or Andrea and speaks only to Daryl as she walks away.

"They didn't find her," she whispers to him as she passes by his seat on the porch railing. Her hand brushes over his calf as she climbs the stairs and heads back inside the house.

He watches her silently until the door shuts, then jumps down off the railing and steps towards them. Andrea keeps walking - she feels suddenly scrutinised and insecure, she doesn't want him to speak to her while Shane's within earshot.

"Any sign?"

She shakes her head; no.

"Where'd you look?"

"We got chased by walkers, okay?" she hisses over her shoulder. "I'm going to take a shower."

She hears his footsteps stop. "You alright?"

"Fine." She doesn't turn.

When she climbs in to her sleeping bag that night, hair wet and skin still dewy; she doesn't think about Shane's hands, roaming over her body, and his mouth, pressed against hers, tongue sliding along her teeth; or whispering filthy things in to her ear. She thinks about Daryl's eyes on her as she walked by him out front of the house, his furrowed brow as they ate dinner on seperate sides of the fire and she tried not to look at him. He didn't speak to her again that day after their brief conversation following her return, but she felt his eyes on her, and hates the guilty feeling that settled in her stomach because of it.

She never owed him anything - they were friends, nothing more, and she's been watching Carol moon after him for days like a lovesick teenager - so why does her encounter with Shane feel so wrong? She rolls over on to her stomach and presses her face in to the pillow, willing Shane to keep his mouth shut about what happened, praying that Daryl is never privvy to any guy talk in which the real goings-on of the visit to the housing estate are revealed.

It's only after she's been awake for a good two hours that she gives in and lets herself entertain the fantasy that she's been trying to quash since she got back to the farm that day. Her hands, on Daryl's chest. His lips on hers. Their hips pressed together - Andrea bites her lip as she realises how right it sounds inside her own head.

This is trouble, she decides. This is never going to happen. Because: if Daryl jumps when she puts a hand on his arm, he'd probably leave the camp and never return if she did to him what she did to Shane today. If she's heard his comments about the only things that matter being finding food, keeping warm, and staying alive, then she has to know that he's sure as hell not going to run around pursuing a romance.

Andrea decides then and there that she's keeping her little crush to herself. Like any crush, soon enough it will fade, to be replaced by purely platonic feelings. Daryl will remain none the wiser and can feel free to continue his friendship with her, opening up as he has been; and Shane will keep his mouth shut if he knows what's good for him. She sighs in to her pillow, frustrated.

Maybe she has more in common with Carol than she first thought.


	14. 91: Birthday

"Oh, my God," Andrea claps a hand over her mouth; laughing. "Is this - Merle's licence?"

She holds the card out to Daryl, seated a few feet away from her. She mentioned a headache and he said he had painkillers in the panniers of his bike; but when she put a hand in there the first thing she found - next to a whole lot of little plastic bags with suspicious contents, and a wad of $100 bills - was a man's leather wallet.

"Gimme that," he says, gruffly, and reaches for the card.

Andrea pulls it back, laughing, and looks at the photo. The Merle in the image looks about ten years younger, with scrappy hair of varying lengths. In the front, he has some kind of dreadlock/bead combination; and he wears a red flannel shirt with a black wifebeater underneath - Andrea's pretty sure he wore the exact same outfit on the day she first met him. She reads over his vital statistics - his height, weight, and address are all unremarkable to her - but she taps her finger on his birthdate. "Nineteen sixty-five," she says. "He's...forty-five? Forty-four?"

Daryl snatches the card from her and looks at it for a second before sticking it in to his shirt pocket. "Leave it be."

"That's a pretty big age gap," she says. "You're, what, thirty-five-ish?"

He shrugs. "Don't see why it matters now."

"It doesn't, I guess," she stands and lets him move past her to get to the bike bags. "Just interesting. He's an Aries, right? April sixth."

"Never paid any attention to that mumbo-jumbo," Daryl hands her a small packet of painkillers and she pops two out of their blisters.

"So. When's your birthday?"

"Why d'you wanna know that?"

"Because I'm curious. And because we're not total savages yet. We can still celebrate people's birthdays," he frowns and she sighs, handing him the painkillers back.

"Never celebrated birthdays," he says. "Just another day."

"Well I won't tell anyone, if you're worried we're going to burst out of the RV with cake and streamers. Mine's December seventeenth. Seventy-six. ...I guess the one good thing about not knowing what day of the year it is means I technically don't ever have to turn forty."

Daryl frowns. "Should be lucky to live that long."

"Yeah," she says, her chipper mood suddenly shattered. "I know. ...forget it. I couldn't tell you what time of the year it is if I tried, guess it doesn't matter when anyone's birthday is any more."

"Take your painkillers," he says, and she does, accepting the half-full bottle of water that he hands her.

-

It's sometime later - almost long enough that she's forgotten their conversation entirely, forgotten his aversion to telling her his birth date, and even forgotten the embarrassing picture of Merle - that she's rustled awake in her tent one morning before sunrise.

"Hey," he whispers.

"Daryl - what? What's wrong?" she instinctively reaches for the nearest item she can use as a weapon, which in this case turned out to be a lamp, but he shakes his head.

"Nothin'; get up," he steps back out on to the grass. "Come on."

He bundles her on to his bike and they cruise out of the farm gates, slowly enough that the engine noise won't wake the rest of the camp. Once they hit the highway, he revs the bike and they fly down the road at full speed, the sun rising slowly in the background.

"Where are we going?" she yells in to the wind, but he either doesn't hear her or still won't tell her.

They drive for about twenty minutes, taking a few turns here and there, before taking a dirt road off the highway and passing a small assembly of signs posted from the Georgia Tourism Board. He parks the bike by a small gate and she climbs off as he flicks the bike's stand down. He unhitches his crossbow from his shoulder, holding it out in front of him, and takes her by the hand.

"This way," he says, and she doesn't know what confuses her more - the random trip to what seems like a vacant lot, or the hand-holding. Since their first kiss at the fire that night, she'd noticed that physical affection of the romantic kind was a rarity - except for a few small unexpected kisses, he'd barely touched her.

She follows him through a small, over-grown garden, and then by an immense pile of white rocks, until they reach a small platform and he guides her up. Crossbow always at the ready, he follows her up the ladder, and pauses behind her when they reach the top.

"Wow," she breathes, looking down at the ground. The piles of white rocks they passed are, from this angle, arranged in to the shape of a large bird. It's wingspan has to be at least a hundred feet, Andrea thinks, and the fence surrounding it shows that it's obviously something of worth that should be protected. The sun on the horizon casts a reddish glow over the ground in front of her, and she can't help but smile as she takes in the picture. She turns to Daryl, one hand reaching out for him. "This is amazing..."

He tilts his head slightly and gives her a little smile. "'s the Rock Eagle Effigy," he says. "Native Americans made it over two thousand years ago. Dragged the rocks here on animal skins. Thought it was pretty neat."

"It is," she smiles wide. "Thank you. But - what made you bring me here...?"

"Well, near as I can figure...it's your birthday. Maybe not today, but soon."

"What? How can you know?"

He shrugs. "Different animals come out at different times o'the year. Some flowers bloom and some die. Trees lose their leaves. The stars are different," he nods up towards the sky. "Weather, of course. Can't pinpoint it exactly but I figure it's 'round the first week in April right now. Maybe last week o'March."

She stares at him in awe. "Daryl," she wraps an arm around his waist and pulls him close to her, and he slowly steps in. "That's amazing. This is one of the nicest things anyone's ever done for me. Thank you."

"Thought you might like it," he says, without ego. "I just figure it's been here all this time, and no-one's moved it or changed it - it was sacred when it was built and it still is now. Some things don't change, even when everything else around them does. Some things do last. ...it's hopeful."

"Yeah, it is," she whispers. She turns and plants a kiss on his lips; and she feels him jump slightly, but he doesn't pull away. "Thank you."

"S'alright."

She turns and looks out again over the eagle, sun rising higher in the sky now. She squeezes his hand in hers and smiles. "You know this does mean you have to tell me when your birthday is," she teases.

"Never gonna happen."

"Can you at least tell me the season it's in?"

"Winter," a smile plays on his lips.

"But it's Spring now," she chides. "Is it really in Winter or are you just saying that?"

"Might've been yesterday 'nd you missed it," he raises an eyebrow.

"It wasn't yesterday," she laughs. "When is it really? What month?"

He studies her for a second. "I'll tell you the week before."

"That's not fair."

"'s your only option."

She wraps her arms around him again and rests her chin on his chest, looking up at him. "So long as we get to celebrate it. Deal?"

He sighs. "Deal."


	15. 92: Christmas

It all starts at dinner one night when Carl, watching Lori feed his newborn sister, asks, "Mom, how will we know when Judy's birthday is?"

Lori pauses for a minute and looks up at him. It's not like any of them have bothered to keep a calendar record of the past year, and though Judy's birth was celebrated, Andrea privately thinks it's unlikely that they will commemorate the day annually.

"It'll be in a year from now, honey," Lori says, and a year is enough time for Carl to forget he asked the question.

"But how will we know exactly when a year is?" Carl asks, and Lori looks to Rick, hesitating.

"Judy was born eight days ago," Beth whispers, "I wrote it in my diary. So we can just count."

Rick smiles and nods once at Beth. "Thank you, Beth. So, Carl, if a year is three-hundred and sixty-five days, and eight days have already passed, how many days until Judy's birthday?"

Carl folds his hands over his face. "Don't make me do math," he groans, sliding comically off his chair in to a heap on the floor, a tangle of boy limbs on the prison break room linoleum. "I think I broke my brain just thinking about it."

This produces a laugh from the group; and Carl takes advantage of the spotlight to pop his head back over the table and ask, "Can we have Christmas, then? If we're having birthdays?"

"Well, it's not just up to us," Rick says, diplomatically, and pointedly ignores the 'honey, no' look that Lori shoots him in order to speak to the group. "What do you say, can we have Christmas?"

Beth murmurs that she'd like Christmas, which instantly elicits a, "we can definitely have Christmas, then, just like at home" from Maggie. Glenn nods supportively at her, and T-Dog takes his cue from Glenn, nodding at Hershel who says that it would be the right thing to do to keep tradition alive. Lori looks hesitant, but nods, and Rick turns to Andrea - seated between Daryl and Michonne at the end of the table, with Merle to their left.

"What do you say?" he asks, hopefully, and Michonne remains silent while Andrea simply shrugs. Merle snorts something sarcastic which earns him a dark side look from Daryl, and finally Carl asks, "But how will we know when it is?"

"It'll be Christmas when it snows," Daryl says, simply, and for some reason Andrea is secretly glad it doesn't snow too often in their part of Georgia.

Lo and behold, about six months and eight days later (according to Beth); it snows.

With all the excitement of a kid finding out they've been snowed in on a school day, Carl leaps to one of the barred windows and whispers, "Snow!".

"Well, how about that," Rick says, clapping a hand on his son's shoulder.

"That means Christmas, Dad," Carl says, and from her standing position at the sink, Andrea buries her cynical thoughts with the sparkle in Carl's eyes. The last time she saw the kid acting like a kid was...well, back at their quarry camp when he did Sudoku for homework alongside Sophia.

"It does, it does..." Rick muses, wheels turning in his head. "It means it's coming soon. Not yet."

The next morning, Andrea is woken by the clunk of metal on her cell floor. Daryl stands at the foot of the bed, an axe next to him, lacing his boots.

"Where are you going?" Andrea asks, blearily. "It's barely daylight."

"Gotta find a tree," Daryl says, "Didn't mean t'wake you."

"You're kidding," Andrea yawns. "A Christmas tree?"

Daryl shrugs. He slings the axe over one shoulder and his crossbow over the other. "Might be."

Pulling the blanket back over her head, Andrea groans. "Really?"

"Rick asked me," he says. "'m going out hunting anyway, might as well."

"If you bring back tinsel, you're in trouble," Andrea says, one eye on him as he steps out the door. Then: "You look good with an axe, by the way."

Andrea wakes an hour later and traipses to the kitchen, where she eats stale Cornflakes drenched in watery powedered milk, in a companionable awkward silence with Maggie and Beth. She's about to stand up and rinse off her bowl when she hears an odd sweeping sound from the end of the corridor, and - thinking the worse - grips her pistol while she creeps out to investigate it. Maggie at her elbow, she leans around the corner and is fixed with the sight of Daryl gripping the trunk of a tree slightly taller than him, dragging it towards the meal room. He's carrying ninety-nine percent of the weight and dripping with sweat, the axe now on his belt and his crossbow dangling from his arm. Carl skips behind him, one hand on the top of the tree, not carrying it so much as being heaved along with it.

"Look what Daryl helped me cut down!" he chirps to the girls' surprised faces, as Daryl gives them both a look that says he not only chopped the tree down, but carried the whole thing back solo, and had to put up with Carl's 'sore feet' complaints on the way.

"That's great, Carl," Beth says. "Have you thought about how you're going to decorate it?"

Daryl's annoyed grunt says it all as Carl stops, drops his end of the tree, and pauses, deep in thought.

It's only a few hours after Andrea hears Merle complaining that someone's stolen his cigarette papers that she sees the cut-out snowflakes adorning the tree that now hulks in the corner of the meal room.

"Did you two do that?" she raises an eyebrow at Carl and Beth.

They look up from their game of Scrabble, wide-eyed and nervous, until T-Dog pipes up. "I took the papers," he confesses. "And I taught them how to do it. If Merle asks, it was all me."

Andrea's face must have been conveying her thoughts - 'why?' - because T-Dog shrugs and says quietly, "I used to do it with my kids. I miss that."

She softens slightly, and tells them the tree looks great.

Merle doesn't complain for long about his missing cigarette papers, because a few days later Glenn and Maggie return from a supply run with a carton of cigarettes, enough papers to confetti a parade ("Man, one of your ancestors must'a been a fuckin' ninja, the way you get in 'n get outta them stores," Merle says to Glenn, who has enough common sense not to note that Korea never produced many ninjas); and a few more cardboard boxes than usual. Andrea comes to the kitchen to help Lori unpack the groceries and finds, amongst boxes of instant porridge and canned carrots, a tinned Christmas pudding and an old carol songbook.

"Where did you find this?" she asks Glenn, bewildered, holding the tinned pudding.

"It was in the supermarket," he shrugs. "Guess when people started raiding them, they took all the stuff that was easy to carry...I suppose there is something a bit weird about eating Christmas pudding while you're on the run from the living dead."

Andrea shrugs and puts the pudding in the pantry with the other groceries, reasoning that it's filling, and packed with carbs, and will come in handy one day when their focus shifts from celebrating holidays to simply staying alive. The songbook has disappeared by the time she's put the rest of the food away, and she hears no other mention of it until a few days later when she walks past Hershel's cell and hears him singing Do You Hear What I Hear.

"This Christmas stuff is getting a bit far-fetched, don't you think?" she asks Daryl that night, as she climbs in to her cot next to him.

He makes a non-comittal noise and curls his arm around her. "Seems to be taking people's minds off everything," he says, as she folds herself against his chest and his lips meet her temple. "Might as well let them have a distraction."

"It just seems inappropriate," Andrea frowns. "Christmas puddings, and snowflake decorations..."

"When'd you turn in to such a Grinch?"

"I'm not, I'm a realist," she says, turning slightly to look at him in the dark. "I just think it's a thing of the past."

"Ain't a thing of my past," he says. "Only time I ever saw a Christmas tree was in the window of a department store."

She laces her fingers in to his and squeezes; thinking that the only thing she needs to bring her joy or cheer is lying under the blankets next to her.

She's suspected for a while now that if someone like T-Dog or Glenn can get in to the Christmas spirit, then Lori will surely become the Martha Stewart of the apocalypse, and she's right - she steps out of the shower one morning and is cornered by Lori, clad only in a towel, whispering excitedly about stuffed venison and tinned cranberries.

"I know Glenn and Maggie are going to do another supply run tomorrow afternoon," Lori says, "Because there was a shooting range they saw that they think they can raid for ammunition and weapons. But I've asked them if they can stop by the supermarket as well. I was thinking that we could have deer for Christmas dinner, and we might be able to make a stuffing - I'd need you to help me, though, Andrea..."

She frowns. "Lori, I don't think cooking is really where my skills lie. Besides - this whole Christmas thing...I think we need to take a look at ourselves. Now is probably not the time to be thinking about the festive season. We need to focus on staying alive. Our resources are best used doing supply runs for necessary food and medical supplies, not stuffing ingredients. Daryl and Carl were out in the woods looking for the perfect tree - who knows what else they could have found. This is -"

"Andrea," Lori puts a hand on her arm, "I know. I know this is stupid, and trivial, and tomorrow morning it might not even matter at all, because we never know how long any of us are going to be here for. You know that, and I know that, all too well. But it's giving people something to look forward to, and something to work towards. That's important. If we can do something like this, then it means we can do other things, bigger things...this could be a step towards us developing in to a society like Woodbury. We need to make the effort."

Andrea sighs. She never thought she'd be thinking this, but maybe Merle has the right idea - his constant disappearances and keeping watch on the roof of the prison have saved him from the festive cheer.

True to Lori's word, Glenn and Maggie make it back from their run with a mini cartel of weapons and a bag from the grocery store. Andrea, Rick, and Daryl pick through the weapons, examining them, and Andrea's got one foot in the corridor, about to ask Maggie if she got any extra clips for the pistol she's holding; when she realises she's stumbled on a private moment. Maggie's arms are around Glenn and she's squeezing him tight, smiling, and thanking him in a whisper for helping her get the supplies together, because ever since Beth was a little girl, she's loved Christmas and all she wants is to be able to see her little sister really smile again.

Andrea stops. She knows how Maggie feels too well - somewhere inside her, long buried, is the same feeling. It existed before the prison, before stalking through the woods with Michonne, before having to put a bullet in to her sister's head. Before the death and destruction she had seen made her cynical, jaded, and closed off.

She finds herself in the kitchen the next day, hands and front covered in stuffing. Michonne enters behind her and heads to the pantry, saying nothing about Andrea's sudden taking to domestic duties - but Andrea thinks, no way, Michonne could never forget the sight of her in an apron covered in foodstuffs, so she'd better say something now.

"I feel like this is 'A Very Special Episode Of'," Andrea chuckles, and when Michonne turns from the pantry to face her, she sees the darker woman's hands are full of small candles. "...no, not you too?"

Michonne smiles sadly. "I thought it would be nice if we lit candles for the dead tonight," she says. "At the dinner table. ...I was going to light one each for Ed and Ryan as well."

"...that sounds like a wonderful idea," Andrea says, softly; and when she sits down at the dinner table that night, the candles are so numerous it hurts her eyes to look at them.

Rick stands, at the head of the table, and holds his plastic tumbler up. "To those who are no longer with us," he says, and one by one, the rest of the glasses on the table are lifted. "To Jacqui. To Jim. To Dale, Shane, Amy. To Ed, Sophia, and Carol. To Annette, Shawn, Otis, Jimmy, and Patricia. To Ed, and to Ryan."

The table is silent, and Andrea notices everyone has their cups in the air, and everyone's eyes carry a certain sadness. She glances at Merle, and even he is lost in thought.

"Those who are no longer with us," she whispers, in chorus with the rest of the table.

It's Glenn who brings out the bottle of rum later, after most of the candles have flickered out, the deer has been eaten, and Andrea's poor attempt at stuffing has been tolerated ("I'd never made it to begin with, let alone with only three ingredients," she protests). He's met with whoops and hollers from the remaining members of the group as he decants it in to the tumblers, and when Maggie reveals a half-full box of Christmas crackers the table lets out a groan-laugh in chorus, and Andrea thinks it's almost like Christmas back at home. They pull the crackers open together, Rick trying to be discreet in his warning about not making too much noise, just in case; and Andrea can't help but laugh when T-Dog piles his head high with the coloured paper crowns that burst from the foil packaging.

"Here's a joke," Rick begins, picking up the folded paper from his wrapper and reading from it, "What did the sheep say to the shepherd?"

"What?

"'Season's Bleatings'", Rick groans, and next to him, Glenn buries his head in his hands.

"Man, that's terrible," he says, reaching for another piece of paper. "Okay - how's this - what did Adam tell his girlfriend on December the twenty-fourth?"

"What did he tell her?" Hershel prompts, and Glenn's already laughing when he says, "It's Christmas, Eve!".

Maggie breaks in to giggles and, when she composes herself, reaches for her own paper crown and puts it on his head. "You're now the King of bad Christmas jokes," she says, and Glenn cracks up, spurred on by too much rum (for him, 'too much' seems to be 'some', Andrea notices that he's made the same 'but why is the rum gone?' joke every time he's refilled his glass).

"You need a crown, Michonne," T-Dog says, and lets one of his float down on to Michonne's dark dreadlocks. She makes a face but doesn't remove it, happy to perch at the end of the table as a paper princess with a knife strapped to her calf.

"If I get one, Andrea gets one," she says, low, and Andrea barely has time to defend herself before she's crowned as well.

"I think Daryl needs a crown," Hershel says, softly, and there's a ripple of nervous laughter across the table.

"I ain't wearin' a hat," he says, leaning back in his seat, deliberately away from crown-filled hands.

"You need one," Andrea whispers, and he raises an eyebrow at her in mock-surprise. She lifts the red and green crown off her head and moves towards him with it. "You can have mine!"

He grabs her wrists, grappling with her as she frisbees it towards his head. It misses and slides down to his shoulder, where he retrieves it with one hand and places it back on her head. "You wear it, Rapunzel". He pushes it down so it covers her eyes and for a moment, all she can see is patches of red and green across her eyes. She feels his hand wrap around her waist and pull her in to his side, smells the light scent of rum on his breath next to her mouth, and thinks for a second that he's about to kiss her - right here, in front of everyone. She hears a little murmur of surprise flow around the table but doesn't feel his lips on hers, instead his hand slides down to her hip and holds her close to him, unmoving. She's still snug under his arm when she moves the crown to regain her vision and finds her own cringeworthy Christmas joke to tell on the table.

"...'n Andrea's heart grew three whole sizes that day," Daryl says against her cheek, quietly. She smiles softly, still not quite sure that she can tolerate Christmas trees and snowflakes and carolling on a regular basis, but this occasion - laughter and comfort and family, by every definition, is Christmas enough for her; and that is worth celebrating.


	16. 93: Thanksgiving

"Hey," Andrea says, picking up one of the Greenes' cookbooks and thumbing through it idly, "What month do you think it is?"

Seated at the table, Daryl looks up from the knife he's sharpening. "Couldn't tell you; why?"

Andrea holds the book open for him - across the two pages she presents, there is a photo spread of a family with over-coiffed hair and pearly white plastic smiles, sitting around a table. No doubt outside there lies a white picket fence and a dog waiting in their yard. On the table rests a large, trussed-up turkey, a bowl of golden roast potatoes, a tray of vegetables cooked to perfection; and to top it all off, a huge pumpkin pie. "Thanksgiving," she says, with a shrug, and looks again at the page for a few more seconds before flipping past it.

"You think we got much to be thankful for?" Daryl glances up at her.

"Well, we're not dead," she says with a shrug. "That has to count for something, right?"

"You've changed your tune," he says with a smirk, and she shoots him a look. She seems vaguely hurt; and when he replies, his voice softens. "Hey, I'm glad for it."

"Mmm."

"You planning on havin' a Thanksgiving, then?" he asks, then adds, "These people don't even like lettin' us use their shower, let alone roast a turkey in their kitchen."

"True," Andrea says. She looks out the window and across the field; nothing but green. "Anyway, I read once that when they take those photos, they don't even cook the turkey first. They just coat it in iodine, that's how they get the colour right. And the vegetables aren't cooked, they're just sprayed with hairspray to give them a shine."

"Gross," Daryl wrinkles his nose.

"Imagine having to sit in front of a raw turkey all day, under those hot lights, and keep smiling for photos?"

"Bit like any Thanksgiving, ain't it? A whole bunch of people sittin' round a table, pretending they don't hate it?"

"Was that what your Thanksgivings were like?"

"Don't know," he says. "Never had one. Didn't believe in it. Really didn't have nothin' to be thankful for in my house."

Andrea nods and gives him a small smile. "I didn't make it home for my last two Thanksgivings. Said I'd make it the year after, and then the year after that...". Her voice trails away.

"Sorry," Daryl says, then places the knife down. He rises. She's still flipping through the book, looking now at Easter Egg dyeing, and he reaches for it so he can take it from her before she can relive more painful memories in the section on Christmas. Or the section on birthday parties for teenage girls.

She beats him to it and shuts the book quickly with a shrug. Placing it back on the shelf where she got it, she says something about going to get something to eat and ducks past him, but he grabs her with an arm around her waist. "Hey, hey," he says, but she steps out of his grasp and looks at him blankly.

"I'm fine," she says, "Looking at that food just made me hungry."

She heads out of the kitchen without another word and he sighs, hands in pockets. He makes a mental note to take every damn cookbook off the shelf and use it for kindling.

Later on that night, they lie together in his tent. Andrea is curled against his side with her head on his shoulder, and he can tell by the pace of her breath that she's only recently fallen asleep. She has tended, recently, to move around violently while she slumbers, or to talk her way through nightmares; so he rightfully guesses that she's not deeply sleeping, otherwise he'd have copped an elbow to the ribs by now.

"Andrea," he whispers. "You 'wake?"

When he gets no response, he tries again.

"Andrea," he hisses.

She wakes with a start and sits up. "What? Did you hear something?"

"No, no," he says, and she relaxes slightly, but still looks irritated. Her hair is fluffed up on the side she was sleeping on, and she rubs a hand over her eyes. "I just, uh...come back down here."

She frowns and settles against his side again, and shuts her eyes. It takes him that long to find the words that he's certain she'll have fallen asleep again.

"I, uh, wanted to say...that I'm...thankful," he stares at the ceiling of the tent. He watches the tree branches swaying above them, in silhouette.

"You're thankful?" She finally repeats, softly.

"Yeah. I'm thankful...I'm thankful that I met you. I ain't never had a whole lot in my life to be thankful for, and I 'specially don't now; but I know I am thankful for you. More than anything, really."

She is silent next to him; and he holds his breath as he waits for her to respond.

"I'm thankful for you too," she whispers, finally.

When he slides his eyes across to look at her in the dark, he can make out the soft glitter of a tear running sideways down her face. He pulls her close and presses his lips to her forehead.

"I'm thankful we met you on the highway that day," he whispers.

"Daryl -" she says, trying to cut him off, she's not the lovey-dovey type and that's what he's always liked about her; but he wants to get this off his chest.

"I'm thankful you didn't stay in the CDC. I'm thankful you never ended up like that walker, hangin' in the forest. I'm thankful I found that flask in Merle's bag, 'cause I'd never've had the guts to make a move on you if I didn't." Against his side, Andrea chuckles. "And I'll tell you this much - I'm fuckin' thankful I weren't the one who taught you to shoot."

Andrea breaks in to a full-on laugh and sniffs, wiping her eyes. She lifts herself up and perches on his chest to kiss him softly. "Thank you," she says at last, then ducks her head. "For not teaching me to shoot, I mean."

"Yeah, yeah," he laughs and curls his arms around her, and pulls her in to his chest; thankful indeed.


	17. 3: Ends

When Andrea's eyes flicker open and she peels herself up off the concrete floor, it's still dark. Between her growling, hungry stomach (not sated at all by the smattering of garbanzo beans she ate as a makeshift dinner) and the headache throbbing at her temple from thirst, sleep didn't exactly come easy to her. She had taken off her jacket to use as a makeshift pillow and she quickly wraps it back around herself, the cold concrete floor and the chilly night air bringing up goosebumps on her skin.

In one corner of the room, Lori and Carol lie with their children spooned between them. Lori's head is pillowed on Rick's lap; and Rick is sitting slumped against the wall, snoring lightly. Andrea doesn't miss the way Carl and Sophia's hands are entertwined, or the way Sophia's doll has been given her own space on the pillow the two share. They look like the perfect portrait of family. Glenn and Dale have put together make-shift beds from chairs and thin cushions, and they lie against the opposite wall of the room, Dale's hat covering Glenn's face. They're almost like father and son, in a way; she's seen the way Glenn defers to Dale on certain decisions, and looks to the older man for advice. T-Dog and Shane are missing from the group, but they're on watch no doubt, pacing the hallways and eyeing off the windows to make sure the group is kept safe.

Only she, Andrea, has been left to sleep alone on the floor. Everyone else has happily turned in for the night in little groups, keeping each other warm and safe. They've swapped clothing, or shared jackets, anything to keep their friends warm and cosy. Andrea spent the night lying on concrete, thin cotton separating her from the dusty floorboards. She swallows around the lump in her throat and scans the room - only Daryl looks as uncomfortable as she feels. He's sitting up against the wall not too far from her, eyes shut, crossbow in his lap. His work pants aren't that much thicker than her jeans and sitting upright on the cold floor all night can't be comfortable. She almost feels bad for him, but then reminds herself of how tense their exchanges have been recently. She thought that their conversation on top of the RV could be signalling the beginning of a new friendship, but there was a flicker of something in his eyes afterwards that made her uncomfortable. It was clear he was only opening up to her out of pity for her situation - he had been cold and distant to her from the next day onwards, always keeping a good distance from her but watching her out of the corner of his eye. It made her feel nervous and unsure, and clearly their mutual discomfort around each other had turned in to a mutual disliking because they hadn't been able to stop snapping at each other since

Not that his feelings towards her were any different than the way the rest of the group felt about her, of course. Lori and Carol kept her at arms' length, unsure of what to do with this person who had no interest in cooking or washing. Glenn seemed nervous around her, ever since she had tried to leave the group behind to stay in the CDC, he'd been walking on eggshells whenever she was around. T-Dog babied her, the way some men did with women - taking heavy things that she tried to carry, volunteering for patrol in her place - as though her desire to die had physically weakened her and made her incapable of doing anything more strenuous than preparing powdered eggs. Dale, Rick, and Shane watched her the way worried fathers would watch an emotionally unstable teen - they took particular care to see her eat every last bite of her meals, and made sure weapons were kept far away from her grasp. At least once a day, Rick would clap a concerned hand on to her shoulder and ask her how she was feeling.

She never told him honestly - she couldn't find the words to say that every night, she went to sleep praying that she wouldn't wake up. That she had always known it was possible to cry yourself to sleep, but she never knew before now that it was possible to cry yourself awake, too. She couldn't tell him that most days, it felt like a Herculean task just to put one foot in front of the other and walk, and that her shoulders felt like their bore a tonne weight even when her back was bare. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw her sister's beautiful face, pale and cold, saw the eyes that opened long after they should have been closed, and heard the growls that came from a place within Amy that she never knew existed. She never told Rick that the only thing stopping her from simply falling to the ground wherever she was and waiting for death to take her was how much it would hurt to get torn apart by the walkers, and how her fear dying like her sister was the only thing keeping her alive. She never told him that she watched the men with their guns, and had memorised who carried what, and where they kept it; where the ammunition was, and when they were most likely to leave their weapon unguarded. She never told him that at all.

She told him she was fine.

And that's probably why Daryl, who is sleeping only feet away from her, hadn't thought to take his hand gun from his pocket and put it somewhere more discrete. In sleep, it had slid out of his work pants, and now lay on the concrete floor, completely within reach of Andrea.

She took a breath.

This was what she wanted. What she had been waiting for.

She inched forward, one hand outstretched. Her jeans scraped on the concrete floor as she crawled and she looked up to Daryl's face nervously - he didn't stir. In sleep, he still carried the tension in his brow that was evident throughout the day. His jaw was set and his muscles coiled - he looked as wound-up as she felt. With her hand inches away from the gun barrel, Andrea exhaled slowly and tipped forward until her fingertips met the cold steel. She curled her hand around it and withdrew it slowly, carefully, millimetre-by-millimetre, from Daryl's side. Her fingers fit around the grip as though they were made for the sole purpose of holding it. In the darkness of the room, she could still make out the gun in her palm - stark lines and deep silver contrasting against the pale, soft flesh of her hand. Holding the weapon, she could feel the weight of the past few weeks being lifted from her shoulders - this was it, her golden ticket, her escape key. She exhaled shakily and shut her eyes. It was the first time she could breathe properly in weeks.

Except then she suddenly couldn't breathe, because in the space of a few seconds, the following happened: a hand clapped over her mouth, rendering her breathless. Her eyes snapped open at the same time as another hand grabbed the gun from her, and in a clatter of crossbow-hitting-floor and a rustle of fabric, the hands were carrying her across the room and out in to the hallway. The door clicked shut behind them as she was unceremoniously dropped to the floor.

"What the fuck do you think you're doin'?" Daryl paced in front of her, ice-blue eyes alight with anger. "Huh? You wanna explain to me the fuck you're takin' my gun for?"

Andrea steadied herself against the wall, mouth open. Forget breathing for the first time in weeks, all the air had left her lungs and didn't seem like it wanted to return any time soon. She was completely terrified. She could feel her mouth gaping open like a fish - she wanted to speak but couldn't find the words, couldn't think of what to say.

"I said I wanna know what you were doin' with my gun," Daryl had perfected the art of shouting and whispering at the same time, and did so centimetres away from her face. He pressed his palms to the wall beside Andrea's head, effectively preventing her escape.

"Get away from me," she hissed, at last. It was weak, but it was all she had. She reached up to push his arms away from her but as much as she wasn't a weakling, she was no match for him. She pushed fruitlessly against his chest, intimidated and raw and upset and bordering on tears. There was no mistaking it - Andrea surged with guilt as she figured out he knew she wasn't taking the weapon to use on walkers. "I said, leave me alone."

"How 'bout you keep your voice down," he growled. "'nless you wanna attract the kind of attention that's gonna get the rest of us killed. Or unless you wanna bring Rick and Shane out here and explain to them what you're doing takin' guns from people?"

"Let me go -" Andrea pushed against his chest with all of her might and he stepped back, taking the gun out of his pocket. She realised, watching him pace in front of her, that she'd never seen him this angry. He was shaking with fury.

"Tell me why you want this," he snapped, bringing the gun up to chest level. "Tell me why you took it."

"None of your business," she hissed.

"Bullshit it ain't my business, it's my fuckin' gun. Now tell me."

"No."

"Tell me," Daryl leant down until he was at eye level with her. His nose was almost touching hers; she could feel his hot breath on her lips. And for a stupid, ridiculous moment, she almost wanted to kiss him. To kiss him until some of that fury and anger entered her and she could feel something again. Feel alive. "Tell me."

She couldn't meet his eyes when she finally whispered, "Don't make me say it."

Everything seemed to freeze for a moment. All she could hear was the sound of his breathing, ragged and angry. With her eyes dropped from his face, she could make out a thick scar that ran across his chest, just below his collarbone. It didn't look recent but the scar tissue still looked red and knotted, and she wondered what had happened to cause that scar. What had driven another person to want to hurt him that much. She wondered how old he was when it happened, and who took care of him after he'd been injured. She wondered if his mother was worried about him afterwards. And then her mind finished playing connect-the-dots and she wondered if it had happened before or after he came home from school one day to find his mother had taken her own life.

Andrea looked down at the gun in his hand. How could she ever have been so fucking stupid?

She opened her mouth to speak but he beat her to it.

"Take it then," he snarled. He pressed the gun in to her hand and she flinched; it suddenly felt ice-cold and too heavy, a weight she couldn't carry. "Go on."

She stared at him in shock, hand still extended.

"You wanted it, you take it," he hissed. "Do it."

She looked down at the gun, terrifying and ugly and dark. She decided that she hated that gun. "No," she whispered.

"What?" he tilted his head, a single eyebrow raised.

"I said no," she murmured again.

He slowly extended his hand and she placed the gun in to it, fingers trembling. She watched as he opened the chamber and emptied the bullets in to his hand - there were three of them. He clenched his fist around them, thinking, then in a flash of rage, flung them down the corridor in to the darkness. They bounced helplessly away, never to be seen again. Daryl stepped forward and gripped Andrea's still-extended wrist, walking her backwards until she was flat against the wall.

"Never again," he whispered, voice low. His nostrils flared as he exhaled angrily. "If you ever -".

But the rest of his sentence was lost to a loud crunching noise downstairs. They froze, adrenaline shooting through Andrea's veins. There were hurried footsteps on the stairs a second later, and Shane emerged at the top of the stairs, Dale's shotgun in hand. "Walkers," he hissed, desperately. T-Dog was at his heels a second later, his face a mask of terror. "Hide."

Andrea had come to learn that there were two general reactions to walkers - fight, and run. They could fight or shoot down a small group of walkers, no problem. And they could generally run from a somewhat larger group. But whatever this was, however many walkers there were, Shane and T-Dog had decided that there was too many to fight. That scared her. And there was too many to run from. That scared her even more.

Before she could think, Daryl was dragging her down the corridor and flinging open a door that had been left ajar. 'JANITOR', the plaque on the door read. It had been screwed on to the one flat part of the door - the rest of the door was slats of wood. As Daryl stepped in behind her and the door clicked shut, she heard a chorus of ragged moans from the top of the stairs. They were here.

Hands shaking, she reached out to search for some kind of lock or bolt on the door, but there was none. Heart in her throat, she looked up to Daryl - neither of them had to say it. They both knew that a janitor's closet that didn't even lock was hardly a great defense.

As the shuffles drew closer and closer, Andrea realised desperately that they one weapon they had wasn't even loaded - the bullets were at the other end of the corridor, completely useless to them now. She pressed a hand to her mouth, willing herself in to silence. Her breath shook against her palm, uneven and terrified. Next to her, Daryl was looking frantically around the closet for something, anything, that could be used as a weapon. Their options were limited to a mop and a bucket, or a selection of random cleaning supplies on one of the higher shelves of the closet.

Andrea pressed her face close to the slats, peering out in to the corridor. She could hear them, gasping and moaning, and smell them - the stench of death was close, and thick in her nostrils. Seconds later, a mottled, rotten face appeared on the other side of the slats and she jumped back - its pale, cold eyes were level with hers. It opened its fleshy mouth and groaned, hands coming up to scrabble on the flats. Its fingers wound their way through the wood, reaching out for her, and she pressed both hands to her mouth as she tried desperately not to vomit or scream.

More walkers shuffled by - some of them continued straight on down the corridor, but more than was safe stopped at the closet, sniffing and groaning as they picked up the human scent. Andrea turned to Daryl, eyes wide and frantic, silently begging him to do something. But what? Between the two of them, they had nothing to fight with and no chance of making a run for it. There was a small crack as one of the slats snapped, allowing a grabbing hand to slide through. The broken wood stabbed at the invading wrist and drew a line of sticky black blood - Andrea realised with horror that the owner of the hand didn't seem to notice or care.

The door sagged under the pressing weight of the walkers on the other side; and in the dark of the closet, Daryl reached out to pull Andrea behind him, one arm pressing her against the wall as he formed a human barrier between her and the walkers. Protecting her. Her hands instinctively grabbed at the back of his shirt as she cowered back against the wall, her face pressed in to the warm muscle of his arm. There was another snap of wood and an arm burst through the slats in the door, grabbing blindly. Andrea found herself pleading, to what or whom she had no idea, but she could hear the words 'please, please, please' being whispered and realised it came from her mouth.

Daryl swiped at the arm with a nearby dust pan and it fell to the floor, bones snapping and flesh ripping. Andrea gasped as it landed inches away from her and the owner of the arm roared in pain and began beating on the door with the stump of elbow left - they were goners for sure. She could feel Daryl standing on tip-toe to grab something from the top shelf of the closet, but what it was, she had no idea. She shut her eyes as another slat snapped from the door and fingers wound their way in, clawing and grabbing inches away from them. With her cheek pressed against Daryl's back she could feel his heart pounding under the skin; this was it for the both of them. Andrea said a silent prayer to the God she hadn't spoken to since she was a little girl, hoping that the end would be quick for the both of them.

It was then that she smelt it - the burning, acidic odor of bleach. Daryl dropped from tip-toe and backed them up further against the wall, one arm stretched out protectively across Andrea, the other against the door. But it was almost unecessary - the walkers began to cough and splutter the moment they smelt the bleach, and Andrea, with one cotton sleeve over her mouth and nose, understood why. The smell of bleach wasn't at all like the smell of warm flesh - it was the smell of chemicals. No human smelt like bleach. No food smelt like bleach. She watched, heart in her throat, as the fingers and hands disappeared back through the door. The walkers hacked and moaned, confused by the scent; but they began to stumble away, dragging their rotting limbs further down the corridor.

It was a long few moments before either of them moved, and when they did, it was only once they heard Rick and Dale's voices yelling for them at the other end of the corridor.

They took the stairs two at a time, Sophia's cries on Carol's shoulder the only sound any of them dared to permit. Racing through the courtyard, weapons at the ready and breath short, Andrea felt Dale's hand on her shoulder, steering her towards the RV. She half-jumped, half-crawled in to the passenger seat as Rick leapt in to the driver's side; the engine purring in to life almost before he had sat down.

Andrea wound down the window and stuck an arm out, grabbing the side of Daryl's shirt as he ran past towards the bike.

"Thank you," she said, finally able to breathe again. He nodded, once, and went to move away but she tightened her grip on his collar, not releasing her hand until his eyes were on hers. "You _saved_ me."


	18. 45: Moon

The night air nips at Beth's bare shoulders as she creeps out of the prison and on to the steps leading down to the yard. She pulls her cardigan up over her bare shoulders, remembering a time when the garment was actually too small for her - a time long before now, a time when she worried about whether her stomach was flat or her hair was glossy. Now, she worries about the hipbones that she sees pressing up against her skin, and the clumps of blonde hair that twist around the shower drain when she washes. She remembers her idyllic life back home, stretched out on the porch tanning, listening to music and writing happily in her diary about the secrets and plans that she and Jimmy would whisper to each other under the covers at night.

Now he is dead, and her iPod ran dry of batteries long ago, and the very thought of lying prone with her flesh exposed sends shivers down her spine. Her sleep is haunted, and her waking hours are no better; trudging through each day with only her family to keep her going. She's sure they see it, though, the emptiness behind her eyes, the way she has to force herself to do even the smallest of tasks - she wills herself to eat, to drink, to shower, hoping each forced moment will bring her some happiness or relief. It never does.

So when she can't sleep, which is fairly often these days, she makes her way out to the yard, sits on the steps, and waits. For what? She's never seen a walker. She's never heard anything unusual. She's never even heard the helicopter that Rick and Daryl went chasing. Occasionally she sees bats or owls swooping in and out of the nearby woods, but they're too far away to provide any interest. The landscape around her remains completely unchanged, like a photo.

Until tonight.

Because tonight, Beth is just shutting her eyes against the soft breeze and pale moonlight, when the door behind her opens slowly. The sliding squeak it gives when pushed all the way open startles her, and she jumps up from her step, ready to run or to fight or to do whatever she needs to escape the hundred-strong horde of vicious walkers that are no doubt behind her.

She spins and stumbles back down a step, but there is no gang of undead there, only one woman - slender and very small against the tall wall of the prison.

"Carol," she gasps.

"Beth!" the woman cries. "I'm so sorry for startling you, I - what are you doing out here?"

Beth looks nervously around. Her father would lock her up if he knew she was sitting out here, but something tells her Carol's not expected to be out here, either. "I'm...I just come here sometimes," she mumbles. "To be alone."

Carol nods. "I understand the feeling."

"What are you doing out here?"

"Just walking," Carol says, shortly.

Beth nods. "Sorry," she says, at length, then adds, "I'll go." As Carol steps further in to the light, Beth can see that her eyes are glassy and red-rimmed. There's no need to ask why - her eyes have looked that way a hundred times before. "...are you okay?" Beth asks, finally.

Carol sniffs once and nods, taking a step down on to the stoop and sitting. "Of course," she says, softening. "You can stay if you like, I won't tell anyone."

Beth hesitates, torn. On one hand, she really should be back in her cot. On the other...Carol looks lonely, and upset. And there's something about the way she smells - a mixture of laundry powder, hot dinners, and floral soap - that reminds Beth so much of her own mother that she almost wants to cry. And she doesn't want to leave that memory just now, not yet.

She returns to the stoop and sits next to Carol, edging closer to the woman to stave off the evening chill. "Aren't you cold?" Beth asks, frowning.

Carol turns to her, a small smile on her lips. She shakes her head. "No, sweetheart," she whispers. "I'm fine."

Beth shrugs. Some people run hot and some people run cold; Maggie was one of those people who would go through Winter in a tank top and hot pants, complaining that the woodfire was making her sweat.

"Do you think Rick and Daryl are okay?" Beth says, at length, toying with the end of her shoelace.

Carol purses her lips. "I think so," she says. "We haven't seen any walkers around this area since we first arrived. They're skilled, and capable. They'll be fine."

"Do you miss him?"

"Rick?" Carol asks. "No."

Beth takes a little breath. "No, I mean...Daryl."

In the half-light, Carol gives a small shrug. "I know he's coming back. There's no reason to."

"No...what I meant was, you and he always seemed to be so close to each other. When we were back home, you were always sort of...looking out for one another." Carol watches Beth, the soft light illuminating her face, and the younger girl continues. "I don't know how many of the others saw it, but I did. But you don't seem to speak to him that much any more. Do you miss that?"

"You're perceptive," Carol laughs sadly.

"I just tend to notice things, I suppose. People think I'm not that smart because I'm quiet, but I just see things and don't say," Beth shrugs shyly. Then she offers, "I saw Daryl and Andrea."

Carol almost laughs. "Yes," she says. "So did I."

"Did you like Andrea?"

"Of course," Carol says. "But he hasn't been the same since we lost her."

"I always thought that maybe..." Beth stops herself. "I mean, you and he were always so close."

Carol shakes her head. "I love Daryl. But not in the way you think I might. I'm not sure if I could love anyone that way again. Not after...well. You're right, Beth. You do notice a lot."

"I just wish I had a friend like you had Daryl, maybe that's why I noticed. Maggie said you were both broken people, but you helped fix each other. ...I wish I had that."

Carol turns to face the yard, eyes bright. For a second, Beth thinks that she's not going to respond, or that she's going to cry, but then she takes a shaky breath and speaks. Beth strains to hear her voice over the night wind. "I think a broken person can only stay broken for so long," she says. "Before we found your father's farm, I was married to a man. A cruel man. ...he broke me. Losing my daughter in the woods...that broke me. When Daryl was your age, he'd already been through more than most of us would go through in a life time, and that broke him. But the years helped to heal him, and he recovered as much as a person could. I may never have that kind of time to heal myself."

"So you'll stay broken forever?" Beth asks.

"Maybe," Carol whispers, cryptically. They sit in silence for a minute; Beth searching for something to say. But it's Carol who speaks up. "We can see so many stars from here. In the city...you couldn't see the sky like this. The city lights are too bright, they cover them up. They don't let them shine."

"When we used to go to the city, I'd hate it. The sky just looked grey to me. Out here, we can see everything," Beth nods. "Mom taught me some of the constellations when I was little."

Carol smiles sadly. "Will you teach me?"

Beth is still for a minute, then she nods. "Well...there's Cassiopeia," she says, her finger pointing out a small bundle of stars. Carol nods. "There's Pisces...and above it is Pegasus..." She blinks once and the bright stars blur in to white blobs, tears falling suddenly from her eyes. "Sorry," she whispers, and wipes them quickly away.

"Oh Beth," Carol says, and wraps an arm around her shoulders. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked."

"It's okay," Beth says, shaking her head. "I always think about the stars when I'm out here. It reminds me of her. It makes me feel closer to her when I remember the things she's taught me. I don't want to forget because...I feel like I might forget her."

The tears begin to fall again, and Carol hands Beth a handkercheif from her pocket. "I'm so sorry, honey," she whispers, stroking Beth's hair. "I'm so sorry that you lost your mother. I can't begin to imagine how hard that must have been for you."

Beth nods. "You lost your little girl, though," she whispers. "Your Sophia."

"I did," Carol says, voice small. She sits in silence with Beth for a few minutes, stroking the girl's hair and looking out at the stars. The sky is peppered with them, thousands upon thousands of soft blinking lights, that she never once saw when she lived in the city with Ed and Sophia. But there were a lot of things she never saw when she was with Ed. The sky back then, like most things, was a cage to her - pressing down upon her and keeping her trapped and stifled. It never opened up. But it has opened now, all the galaxies in all the universe have become available to her to view forever. She turns to Beth and lifts the girl's face up, thumb on her chin. Wiping away the stray tears from her cheeks, she smiles. "You're such a beautiful young lady, Beth. I know you never met my Sophia, but I had always dreamed that she would grow up to be a young woman just like you. Smart, beautiful, giving, kind...".

Beth smiles sadly. "With you as her Mom, I'm sure she would have."

Carol looks in to Beth's eyes for a long second, dark blue meeting light. "Will you pray with me?" she asks, softly, and Beth nods.

It has been a long time since Beth has spoken to God, so long that she worries he will have forgotten her. But her hand slides in to Carol's, and her eyes close, and she almost lets herself imagine for a second that she's at home, at the table, saying Grace with her family - hands all linked together, giving thanks. She wants to make a list of things she is thankful for, but she can't think of any - then she forces herself, she tries with all her heart, because to stand speechless in front of God with nothing to thank him for would be ungrateful indeed - so she prays for the friends and family she still has with her. She asks God to look after Maggie, and her father, and keep them safe and close to her. She asks Him to look after Glenn, and to ensure he and Maggie are never separated. She asks God to look after Rick and Daryl on their mission, and tells Him how grateful she is that they've kept the group safe. T-Dog, for always having time to spend with her and Carl, no matter how long his patrol was. Carl, for being a true friend. Lori, for always keeping an eye on her and treating her like she was family; and Carol - especially Carol - for being here with her now, and praying with her, and for smelling just like her mother, and having the same worn-out but still kind smile.

Beth lowers her head cautiously in to Carol's lap, she's nervous that the woman may push her away at first; but she doesn't, she just sighs contentedly and begins stroking her hair slowly again. She curls up in to her warm flesh, eyes shut, her small fingers gripping on to Carol's as they sit together, a perfectly broken picture of mother- and daughter-hood.

It's then that Beth shifts just slightly and the crown of her head nudges against something heavy and solid in Carol's pocket. She opens her eyes cautiously and sits up.

"What's in your pocket, Carol?" she whispers, but Carol doesn't respond. She's looking out and slightly to the left, gaze fixated on nothing in particular, eyes tear-filled and glassy.

"I'm going to go now, sweetheart," Carol whispers, not looking at Beth.

"...where to?"

Carol stands and brushes off her jeans, and a few stray tears fall from her eyes as she does.

"Where are you going, Carol?" Beth asks; and she doesn't understand why, but there's a sudden urgency in the air. She nervously thumbs her cardigan as Carol steps in front of her and presses her lips to her forehead, chin trembling under the pressure of her tears.

"I love you," she whispers, and Beth could have sworn she caught the whisper of a name that isn't her own.

Carol stands and begins to walk away and Beth stands, too, feet rooted to the step with fear. Every inch of her blood surges with adrenaline.

"Tell me where you're going!" Beth squeaks.

A few feet away from the steps, Carol turns. The moonlight illuminates her face just slightly, enough for Beth to make out her hair, slightly greyer now than when they first met, and growing out longer in some places. Her eyes bear thin wrinkles around them that make her look older than she really is, and her lips are thin and taut, pressed in to a line. She is thin and wiry, small muscles visible on her arms, and the bump-bump of ribs visible through her tank top. In the pocket of her jeans, just below a hip-bone that juts out too far, is the sinister, black handle of a pistol.

"Go back to bed, Beth," Carol says.

Beth runs.

Linoleum tiles flash by fast under her feet as she runs through the prison back offices and towards the main stairs, heart pounding in her ears as she takes them two at a time. Her flashlight wheels over the walls, a strobe effect of light blue and pitch black, and more than once she almost collides with a dead end or a closed door. If she can get back to their block, she reasons, she can wake her father, and he'll know what to do...

The gun goes off by the time she turns in to their corridor and her feet slow immediately. She gasps in to the darkness, turning to the nearest window to peer out - but she sees nothing. Voices begin to rouse from the end of the hallway and Glenn runs past her first, followed by Maggie, both of them bearing shotguns.

"Please -" Beth calls out, but Maggie only turns to bark orders back to her cell. T-Dog runs by her next with a baseball bat, and her father soon follows, bleary-eyed and carrying his rifle. "What are you doing out of bed?" he asks, frantically, grabbing her wrist. Only feet away from them, Lori is yelling frantically for Carol, and Carl is calling for her too, their voices bouncing around the cell walls. Beth's father shakes her arm, looking up and down the corridor, confused: "Beth? What are you doing here? Where were you? Whose gun was that?"

Beth just shakes her head and begins to limp back to her cell, defeated. By the time her head hits the pillow and she pulls the blankets up around her ears, she can hear her sister and Glenn yelling for help from the courtyard below.


	19. 77: What?

The first time Glenn comes to him, he only notices the boy because his shadow falls across the head of the deer as Daryl is pulling his arrow from its temple.

"Hey man," Glenn says, standing a few feet away, as though he's waiting for an invitation to come closer.

Daryl looks up, squinting in to the sunlight surrounding Glenn's face, and nods.

"You kill that today?" Glenn asks, tapping his toe towards the deer.

"Sure did," Daryl says, and removes his knife from his belt. He drags it down the centre of the animal's soft abdomen, watching the skin spring loose as viscera slowly begins to release itself from inside.

"Whoa," Glenn springs back, "What the fuck?"

"What, you think this comes outta cans?" Daryl laughs. "You're Asian, I thought you'd be all over this. Eating dogs and stuff."

"Dude, I'm Korean. We eat, like, kimchi."

"Yeah, 'n you eat this when it's on the plate in front of you; what, you're scared to see it raw?"

"Fuck, man," Glenn says, pulling his sleeve up over his hand and using it to cover his nose. Lying on its back, the deer's legs hang down to either side of its body, leaving a gaping, pornographic gash of blood and organs on show. Glenn backs away. "Forget it, I'll come back."

Daryl shrugs. He watches Glenn retreat and then returns his attentions to his kill, scooping out the intestines with a quick grab and a flick of his knife. He's never seen someone so ungrateful for a meal.

As Daryl expected, Glenn eats his serving of the deer that night, and as the rest of the group trudges off to their cells with full stomachs, Daryl stands up ready to take his plate to the kitchen - but Glenn's hand darts over his shoulder and grabs it before he can.

"It's cool," Glenn shrugs. "I'll wash up."

Daryl eyes him cautiously. "Thought Maggie was on dishes," he says, following Glenn through to the kitchen.

Glenn shrugs. "Beth's not doing so well tonight. Her seven-month anniversary with Jimmy, or something. I thought I'd take over for Maggie so she can go be with her."

"Fair enough."

"Plus considering you're the one who usually brings us food, I figured you should get a night off every now and again."

Daryl nods. "Thanks," he says gruffly.

"No problem," Glenn gives him a slightly too-cheery-smile and dunks the plates in to the full sink. "You doing okay?"

"What?"

"Are you doing...okay?" Glenn suddenly looks nervous.

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Just with the whole..." He hesitates and scrabbles for a wash cloth, which he finds hanging on one of the cupboard handles. "You know, with -"

"I gotta go," Daryl interrupts. "'m on watch."

He turns from the kitchen without another word.

He's not on patrol though, not tonight. He wraps his poncho around himself and sits down on the back steps of the prison, looking out over the yard. Somewhere out there, T-Dog roams the perimetre with a gun, keen eyes watching for any unusual movement. Daryl has to hand it to the man, he's not a bad shot nowadays, and he seems eternally eager-to-please which means he's usually willing to take the night patrol shifts that nobody else but Daryl wants. However, with Daryl having been on patrol for the last four nights in a row, Rick insisted he get some sleep and sent T-Dog out.

Which is fine for Rick, who gets to lay in a cosy cot with his pregnant wife and his son, still alive, still unharmed. It's fine for Hershel to give him knowing looks and murmur quietly, "Are you getting enough sleep, son?" when he sees Daryl sitting at the breakfast table, rubbing bruised and tired eyes for what seems like the hundredth night in a row; because Hershel still has some family left, Maggie and Beth, and the two girls have each others' shoulders to cry on as well. They both adore Glenn, doesn't everyone just love him; even Carol, who keeps giving Daryl certain looks whenever Rick does something she doesn't agree with. He hears her cry some nights, alone in her cell, when she thinks the rest of the group is sleeping. Her tears make him uncomfortable in a way he can't pinpoint, it makes him feel like a kid again, hearing his mother cry through the thin walls of her bedroom and wishing he knew what to do to make it stop, but also wishing he'd never heard it to begin with.

He knows what the looks she gives him mean, and knows what she wants. She doesn't trust Rick, and doesn't respect him, but somewhere along the line something that Daryl has done has given her reason to put him on a pedestal as the future group leader. He searched for Sophia, but that alone can't be reason enough for him to become the new Sheriff in town. He didn't even find her. Some Sheriff he'd be. He never found her, or Merle, or Andrea. Andrea, he didn't even look for. Daryl picks up a small rock from the stoop at his feet and hurls it as hard and far as he can. It lands some distance in front of him, against the wire fence.

"Man of honour," he murmurs to himself, then laughs bitterly. Carol ought to keep looking.

"Hey, sorry about the other day, man," Glenn says to him a few nights later, as Daryl paces the perimetre of the prison. He wasn't sleeping anyway, so he relieved Rick of his gun and binoculars and sent the man back to his family.

"Jesus, kid, watch out," Daryl growls, not breaking his stride as Glenn jogs up to him to keep the pace. "Almost thought you were a walker. Could'a taken you out."

"Sorry," Glenn says again, falling in to step with Daryl. He's not as tall as him, his legs aren't quite as long, so he seems to take two steps for every one of Daryl's. It reminds Daryl of watching Carl run after Rick. "I just wanted to, you know, clear the air. I didn't mean anything by what I said."

Daryl eyes him off cautiously. "S'alright."

"But...I did want to ask if you were alright," Glenn shoves his hands in to his pockets.

"What d'ya mean?"

"It just can't be easy, is all...with Andrea gone."

Daryl stops, and Glenn takes a few more paces before stopping and turning. "Means we're one short for patrol; that's pissin' me off," Daryl says, and he doesn't like the mechanical edge his voice has taken on.

"You know that's not what I mean," Glenn says, sadly.

"Well, why don't you mind your own fuckin' business then," Daryl snaps, suddenly, starting to walk again.

"Dude, I don't mean to pry," Glenn hurries beside him. "It's just, Maggie said Hershel told her you haven't been sleeping. I see you out here all the time pacing around the yard, it's weird. When you're not out here, you're in the woods. You barely talk to anyone. Carol said you haven't spoken to her for a week. You only talk to Rick, and even then, you say like five words to him -"

Daryl spins and steps towards Glenn, who steps back instantly. "You know what?" he breathes, low, "You, and Maggie, and Carol, and Hershel, and the whole lot of ya - who are sittin' in there on your asses with nothin' else better to do than run your mouths - can go fuck yourselves. Ought to take my bike and get outta here the first chance I get."

He strides away, blood boiling. It was one thing for Glenn to be watching him when they were out on the road, seeing the signs he was trying hopelessly to leave for Andrea. The note he wrote her that never worked. The markers that never brought her to him. But to be stuck here with Glenn and the rest of the group gossiping behind his back, and their judgement...he doesn't know what he hates more, the half-assed attempt he made at finding her, or the fact that said half-assed attempt is now the topic of everyone's conversation.

As he strides away, he's pretty sure he hears Glenn mutter, "asshole".

He skips dinner the next night and heads out to the yard alone, crossbow over one shoulder and pistol in the back of his jeans. As he shuts the heavy door behind him, he hears the soft laugher and conversation of the rest of the group echoing down the corridor. Even Carol was smiling at the dinner table as he crept past, he caught a glance of her shy grin to Lori as he crept by the meal hall. He decides that the less time he spends with them, the better. Let them say what they will about him. It's easy to criticise when you've got nothing else to do. Rick, and T-Dog - he's never heard shit from either of them. Because unlike Glenn and Hershel and Maggie, they've got more important things to do than discuss his failings.

Daryl grits his teeth and strides across the yard, keen eyes sweeping the open space. It's near the trees that he sees it - a small black silhouette. He freezes and swings his crossbow around to the front, training the bolt on the human-like shape at the other end of the field. He presses his back to the fence and creeps along the perimetre, stopping every now and again to take stock of what else is around him. Seeing no movement from anywhere else in the field, he ducks low and sprints towards the shape, his finger tense on the trigger. It's only when he gets close that he realises it's standing too upright and walking with too much ease to be a walker - it's definitely human.

His heart stops for the smallest of moments. Andrea?

Then: "Hey, do you mind not pointing that thing at me?" Glenn.

"Damn it, kid," Daryl yells, stomping his boot in to the dirt. "The fuck are you doing out here?"

"Patrol," Glenn retorts, bitterly. "Thought you'd be on your bike and out of here by now. We can all go fuck ourselves, remember?"

Daryl sighs, angrily. "Yeah, you sure can now. Get back inside. You don't need to be out here. I can handle patrol alone."

"Yeah, because you don't need the rest of us, do you."

"What do you want, Korea?" Daryl yells, arms wide.

"Okay. Look," Glenn snaps, stepping out of the shadows towards Daryl. "I get that you think you've got everyone fooled by playing the asshole. I get it. You spend like every night out here alone, you drag deer back home every other day, you were Rick's right-hand-man when he was clearing this place of walkers. You've got the bike, you've got the crossbow, you've got a necklace made of ears; I get it, okay? You're like Woody Harrelson in that movie. But we all saw how hard you searched for Sophia. We all saw how upset you were when Merle never came back. I saw all the signs you left for Andrea out on the highway - the rocks, and the shirts tied around trees, and the note - so don't try to pretend like you don't give a shit about anyone, okay?"

Daryl feels himself tense up; and Glenn continues. "It's not exactly easy for me either, just so you know. I've got Maggie and Beth relying on me. Hershel's not young any more, he's not going to be able to defend the group like you or Rick could. It actually dawned on me the other day that I might be left taking care of Beth and Maggie one day, and that scares the shit out of me. I can shoot a gun, like, barely. I don't know how to hunt. So I know how it feels to have people pressuring you. I know what it's like to have to act tough when you're actually shit-scared, or really upset, or totally stressing out. All I've tried to do was find out if you're okay, man. In the interests of, like, looking after the group, considering we might actually be the only people left on the planet. I know you think I'm just some kid; but are you actually okay, man? I'm just wondering. ...that's all."

Glenn shrugs, finally out of steam. He stands staring at Daryl for a minute, and Daryl stares straight back, before he finally gets his voice working and says throatily, "I'm fine."

Glenn nods once and walks back to camp, without another word.

Daryl comes down to breakfast the next morning after another sleepless night; the few hours of shut eye he got after patrol resulting only in him lying in his cot, tossing and turning, with Glenn's voice echoing through his head. He eats a few bites of powdered egg while standing up in the kitchen, then tosses the plate in to the sink, the tasteless eggs sliding wetly off the dish and on to the stainless steel. There are a few pieces of deer jerky left - not many - and about enough vegetables to last for another day. The vegetables he can't help with, but the deer he can. He throws his vest on, hoists his crossbow up, and heads through the meal hall on his way to the exit.

Glenn's sitting at the table, between Hershel and Beth, and Daryl is reminded of what the kid had said the night before. With one foot out the door, he turns, strides back in to the hall and yells, "Kim Jong - you comin'?".

"Dude, that is so offensive," Glenn mutters, but his steady footfalls follow Daryl down the corridor regardless.

Neither of them speak until they reach the deep woods, and Daryl decides Glenn might have some potential at hunting. He knows how to walk quietly, he watches observantly as Daryl examines a patch of freshly-bitten grass, and when he loses track of a deer-scat trail, Glenn simply nudges him and whispers, "Over here". The scat trail turns in to hoof-prints in mud, and they crouch low in the bushes as a small deer steps nervously out from behind a tree.

"Quick," Glenn whispers, nudging Daryl.

Daryl shakes his head. "'s a baby deer," he murmurs, low.

"So?"

"So, mama deer is gonna be 'round here somewhere. We shoot the baby, we scare her off. We wait for mama, shoot her - more meat than on a baby deer. Have a chance at getting both, even."

Glenn nods and holds his breath; and sure enough, in time, a large doe steps out. Daryl takes her down in a second, then flicks his crossbow over to the smaller animal. It jumps away but Daryl's bolt catches its clumsy flank, slowing it down, and he gives chase and plants an arrow in its neck.

Crouching over the deer, Daryl pulls the arrows out and wipes them, replacing them in his quiver.

"Did Andrea know how to hunt?" Glenn asks, at last. Daryl pauses for the briefest of moments, then shrugs.

"She could fish," he says. "Taught her a bit about huntin' - just little things. Squirrels and birds and that."

Glenn nods. "That's good," he breathes.

"Yeah."

"I think she's gonna be okay, man," Glenn says, as Daryl helps him lift the baby deer on to his shoulders. Daryl only shrugs. "She was tough, you know that. She could look after herself."

"Yeah," Daryl says again, non-committally.

They walk in silence for a little while, the deer heavy on their shoulders. "At least we have food," Glenn pipes up at one point, and Daryl's about to ignore him, then he reconsiders.

"Yeah, we do," he says, optimistically.

The prison walls rise up ahead of them and Daryl feels antsy all of a sudden, like he's running out of time. They're almost home.

"What would you've done if it was Maggie who got left behind?" he asks, suddenly. Glenn turns to him.

"I'd - you know," the younger man begins, and Daryl nods. He doesn't have to continue the sentence.

"You'd've gone back," Daryl says.

"Yeah," Glenn whispers.

They walk in silence to the fence, and Daryl finally drops the deer and drags it behind him instead, but his shoulders don't feel any less heavy.

"She'll be alright," Glenn says again, as they walk through the field. "And so will you."

Daryl nods. He's not sure which statement he believes less.


	20. 11: Red

For as long as she lives, Andrea will never be able to remember quite everything that happened that night.

She remembers the yelling, and the running, and rounding the corner in to the clearing. Her last concrete memory is of seeing Daryl rip the walker off Dale and throw it to the ground, the sick cracking sound as his bare fist connected with its jaw; and then everything is fragmented. It's like watching a slide show in fast-foward: there's blood, spilling from Dale's stomach and saturating the ground with a deep red; there's his eyes, wild, and bulging with pain; and then there's the odd little things that stick in her head: seeing T-Dog crying. Hearing Lori telling Carl to look away. The hitch in Glenn's voice as he covered his mouth, whispering, "Oh, fuck, oh my god, oh fuck". She doesn't remember how the gun got in Daryl's hand but she remembers the gunshot, ringing loud and clear in the night, and how it seemed to silence everything that came after it. As she stood up and walked away from his body, she could see Rick stepping towards her, concerned, and see his mouth moving, but she heard no sound that came out of it. She power-walked back to camp, unable to feel the damp grass brushing over her legs, unaware of the blister on her heel that had been paining her all day, unable to hear Carol's concerned questions in her ear and, really, unable to feel the woman's hand on her shoulder.

When she finally comes to and stops seeing the world through a fish-eye lens, it's because of Shane's voice.

"He's a murderer now too, y'know," the words fly in to her head and bounce around, getting louder and louder; until they bring her back in to the here and now. Suddenly she's standing in front of the sink in the Greene's kitchen, washing her hands; and all of her senses are ignited at once. The water on her hands is freezing cold, and the tiles in the kitchen seem piercingly white, providing a shocking contrast to the red swirling in the sink. Suddenly lightheaded, she swallows against the bile rising in her throat.

"Get away from me," she whispers, once her eyes focus on him.

"Your hillbilly boyfriend ain't good for nothin' but following orders," Shane drawls. He's a few metres away from her, but ambling slowly closer. "Tell you what, you got that man wrapped around your little finger. You tell him to jump, he asks how high, you tell him to kill a man, he asks where to point the gun."

"You don't know anything about him," she whispers, turning to him. He steps closer, and she can make out his face now, dark eyes and lip curled in to a snarl. His eyes wash over her body and then he suddenly steps forward, his face transforming in to a mask of concern.

"You're covered in blood," he says tenderly, reaching out to her, and her eyes follow his hand. She is indeed covered in blood; her pant legs are dark red and blotchy, and her t-shirt has ruby splatters all over it. His hand connects with her upper thigh and she jumps; his fingers feel lava-hot. "C'mere, Andy."

"Don't call me that," she says, and she feels like she's about to cry. "Get away from me."

She steps back, the small of her back coming in to contact with the edge of the counter.

"Andy -" his hand clamps down on her shoulder and she snaps, reaching up and smashing her hand in to the side of his face. It's a weak combination between a slap and a punch but it startles him and he steps back.

"Fuck you," he hisses, wrenching his hand away from her and holding it to his jaw. He steps in quickly, threatening, and she raises her hands to shove him away when they're both interrupted by a voice at the door.

"Thank you for coming to check on Andrea, Shane," Hershel says without agenda, stepping in to the kitchen. "No doubt everyone's had a traumatic evening. Why don't you let me take care of her from here, and I'm sure she'll find you when we're done."

Shane's eyes don't drop from hers as he steps wordlessly away and slinks out of the room. Hershel watches him as he goes then opens his mouth to speak before reconsidering and resting his hand on Andrea's forearm. "Are you feeling alright?" She nods. He's watching her with careful eyes, examining eyes - doctor's eyes. She notices that his shirt has a faint red pinstripe running through it and she shudders. "I want you to have some water, then go and change in to some fresh, warm clothes. I'm sure we can find you some. We just don't want you to go in to shock."

Andrea opens her mouth and responds, but she's not quite sure of what she says.

"Why don't you go and take a shower," Hershel offers, "I'll send Maggie up to check on you."

In the back of her head, there is the dim awareness that Maggie doesn't like her and would probably be the last person to care about her well-being, but Andrea can't remember why that is. Instead of arguing, she walks slowly to the stairs and then up them, one foot in front of the other, and then along the hallway to the bathroom.

She shuts the door behind her and stands blankly in front of the mirror, unable to remember for a second why she is there. Then she remembers Hershel saying she needed water, so she turns the tap on and cups her hands under the stream, bringing the make-shift cup to her lips. The water is cold against her tongue and she tastes a coppery tang, but she's not sure if it's from her own mouth, or her hands, which must still carry slight traces of blood. Then she remembers the walker in the well and wonders where the tap water is coming from. She spits out her mouthful of water, and keeps spitting until her mouth is bone dry.

She stands again and looks at herself in the mirror, examing her facial features. Under the stark light of the bathroom she looks unfamiliar even to herself, but when she blinks, her reflection blinks, and when she moves a hand to push her hair back, her reflection does too; so it must be her. If the reflection in the mirror is her, she realises, then the bloody clothes that the reflection wears must also be her own. She snaps her head down to look at herself and realises they are, indeed, her clothes - with a sudden rush of horror she realises how saturated she is with Dale's blood. It coats her legs and stomach and flecks of it have made their way on to her collarbones, and neck, and hair - she can smell it, even, its sickly-sweet odour is overpowering.

She unzips her jeans frantically and pushes them down, feeling them peel wetly off her skin as she kicks them away. Her hands reach down to her front and begin to pull at her top, ungluing it from her flesh and ripping it over her head. She gasps as the wet fabric sticks to her face, head spinning, and she frantically disentangles herself from the garment before throwing it in to the bathtub. She catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror and her face is slick with a tribal mask of vermilion, and she's moving on auto-pilot when she flicks the taps on and begins splashing water over her face in an attempt to get it off. She blinks through the wet and sees red, swirling down the sinkhole again, and red on her hands, and red still on her face, spreading with the water and running down her chest. Then she realises - the walker in the well - and between that and the blood she's managed to cover herself in, she can't seem to get enough oxygen in her lungs to cope with it all. She watches herself gasping, gulping for air like a fish out of water; and then there is a clicking sound to her left and a blur of movement, and she's collapsing against something warm and refreshingly navy-blue.

Everything is blissfully calm for a moment, and then there's a rush.

When she re-awakens, the first thing she realises is that the lip of the bathtub is uncomfortably pressing against her Achilles' heel. Then she opens her eyes and blinks in to the bathroom light, slowly aware that she's horizontal on the floor. Her head is pillowed on a folded towel, and her feet are propped up on the tub. She has a distant memory of sitting through a workplace first aid refresher course in which they were told to raise the feet higher than the heart for people who had fainted, and she wriggles her toes, adjusting to the change in equilibrium.

"You back?" a voice above her says, and she cranes her neck, finding the source. "Here," he says, and moves in to her line of vision - Daryl is crouched next to her, frowning. He's wearing different pants than he was before, (she thinks they may in fact be the same pants Hershel was wearing when she first met him) and his denim vest is pulled on loosely over a thin blue jumper. He reaches a hand out to touch her forehead and she closes her eyes against it.

"I'm here," she murmurs drowsily.

"D'you remember comin' up here?" he asks, removing his hand. She shakes her head, and then takes a breath - yes, she does; she remembers Shane, and the stairs, and - oh - the blood - she sits up suddenly, it's still there all over her skin, but her head spins and she sags against Daryl's knee. "Hey, hey, hang on," he soothes, helping her back down to the floor.

She shuts her eyes and tries to catch her breath. The tiles on the floor are cold against her bare back - her bare back? Her eyes fly open and she remembers her shirt in the bathtub, and jeans on the floor - that's right. "I, um -" she starts, folding her arms against her chest, and he nods.

"Yeah, I know," he says, eyes remaining squarely fixed above her neckline. "Can you sit up?"

She does sit up, slowly; and he helps her to sit against the bathtub. Leaning up against it, it's not so bad - her head gradually stops spinning and she takes a few deep breaths, steadying herself. She reaches for a towel and pulls it around her shoulders, exhaling through pursed lips.

"Gimme your hands," he says, softly, and she extends them to him. She feels sudden warmth and wetness on her palms, and when she opens her eyes, she watches through hooded lids as he wipes her hands with a warm cloth. She doesn't want to think about it, and she tries not to, but she does - she thinks about Dale, his body lying cold and torn on the grass outside, the fear and panic in his eyes during his last moments, and the amount of pain he had to have been going through. She hears a small whimpering sound and then realises that it came from her own lips, and suddenly her face crumbles. She collapses forward, shoulders shaking, and sobs Dale's name; crying for everything that he had lost - not just him but also his wife, and his chance at having children of his own, and his very faith in the group that shared his last moments on Earth with him - and for what she has lost in him. She realises that she isn't just crying for him, a man she looked up to like a father, she's crying for her actual father and mother as well. She never told them she loved them enough, never called them, never appreciated them as she should have...

Daryl pauses next to her, and she can feel his hesitation at her tears, but she doesn't care - all she wants is to cry, to curl in to a ball and cry until she has no tears left. "I never said goodbye to them," she whispers, hiccuping, "I never said goodbye."

He surprises her often and now is another one of those times - he doesn't leave her, and he doesn't take her in his arms and hold her - he just rinses out the cloth in the sink, wets it again; and moves it up her arms slowly, stopping every now and again to squeeze it in to the sink, until he eventually he reaches her shoulders. He pauses when he reaches the edge of the towel she'd placed around herself, but then slides it off slowly and leans her forward as he strokes down her back. He moves around to her front next, and she feels him trace around the edge of her bra, and lo and behold, when she looks up his eyes are focused on her shoulder rather than her near-naked body in front of him. She shuts her eyes and lets him continue his movements, down to her stomach (his fingers barely touch her skin as he holds her steady) and then along her legs, and somewhere along the line she realises he's never seen her undressed before.

By the time he's raising her arms to slide a thick woolen jumper over her, she seems to have run dry of tears, and in-between little hiccups, she tries to catch her breath.

"Thanks," she whispers, and swallows around her dry throat. "Sorry."

"For what?"

She just shakes her head and leans in to him, head on his sturdy chest.

He shrugs. "S'alright." He has a pair of jeans in one hand and he awkwardly makes a move to hand them to her, unsure of how exactly to get them on her; but she steadies herself with a hand on his shoulder and steps in to them, pulling them up and buttoning them.

"You'll be okay," he murmurs, softly.

She nods and he guides her out of the bathroom with a hand on the small of her back. She wants to think about Dale, or about Randall, or about Shane, she's used to having her mind run a thousand miles a minute; but she simply feels too exhausted to think about anything other than a nice warm sleeping bag, and the six or so hours of unconsciousness that sleep will bring her. She goes to turn down the stairs but Daryl hooks her and keeps her moving along the corridor towards the spare bedroom - the room where Carl lay on the edge of death; and the room where he, Daryl, recovered from his wounds.

"Did Hershel tell you to put me in here?" she asks uncertainly, her legs already carrying her on to the bed.

"He won't mind," Daryl says, and pulls the blankets up around her shoulders. She shuts her eyes and snuggles down in to the pillow, sleep already threatening to overcome her.

"Stay with me?" she asks, opening her eyes to find him at the door.

"D'you really want me to?" he asks, and at first she doesn't understand his hesitation. Then it sinks in - Dale. Of course.

"Stay," she whispers. "Please."

He crosses the room and sits down tentatively on the bed next to her, kicking off his boots. He stretches his legs over the blanket and she paws at him, attempting to get him under the bedsheets. "Go to sleep," he whispers, pulling her in to his lap. With her head resting on his thigh and her arm curled around his knee, she does fall asleep, and quickly; floating off to a world in which Dale is completely fine, but then suddenly staring in shock at a bullet wound in his stomach. Dream-Dale collapses to the ground and Andrea tries desperately to stop the bloodflow, but she can't, and he dies in her arms as a gun-wielding Shane looks on.

Her eyes snap open and she's thrown in to waking with a gasp; but Daryl is still there, stroking her hair and shushing her. She presses tighter to him and falls asleep again, this time dreamlessly, eyes floating shut against the darkness.

But when she wakes in the morning, not used to the feeling of a mattress underneath her bones; Daryl is gone.


	21. 65: Passing

Andrea doesn't have to ask to know.

She doesn't even have to turn around to see.

By the way Michonne suddenly stills, the muscles in her arms tensing and releasing, Andrea can tell she has seen something that's got her on guard. They're rummaging through a car boot, arms full of blankets and clothes, when Michonne stands bolt upright and uses the rear-view mirror to get a glimpse of what's happening behind them. With full trust in Michonne's instincts, Andrea slowly moves her hand to the tyre jack that lays at the back of the boot and begins to pull it towards her. Seconds after she has it in her grasp, Michonne spins around and pulls her katana from her side in one quick, cat-like motion.

Andrea turns as well, feet wide, back strong, bearing the tyre jack in front of her as both a shield and a weapon. The walker that crawled out of the old, overturned bus is big and bulky - it probably would have been a very muscular man in a past life. But now, it's just an assortment of puffy, rotten flesh and black blood that oozes from a wound to its gut.

Michonne laughs; a hollow, mirthless laugh. She steps forward and Andrea moves with her, only a few steps behind. Michonne lifts her katana high and aims for the walker's neck, planning to behead it in one fell swoop, but the walker is unexpectedly quick - it lunges for Andrea and its arms fly up, effectively blocking Michonne's blade. She lands the katana in its arm and swiftly pulls it back out, swinging it again at the same time as Andrea lifts her arms to ram the tyre jack in to the walker's fleshy skull.

Andrea realises, a few seconds beforehand, what's about to happen and she cries out; but the katana is already in motion. She watches the sun glint off the silver blade as it slices in to the skin of her upper arm, clipping her as Michonne drives it through the walker's neck. Andrea drops the jack and grabs her bicep, gasping with pain, as the walker falls to the ground. Its head rolls to a stop some metres away, still hacking and gibbering.

Stumbling backwards, Andrea doubles over in pain, breathing hard through her teeth.

"Fuck," she gasps. She gingerly pulls her hand away from the wound and blood begins to ooze down her arm. She moves quickly, pulling off her tank top and pressing it to the wound, then tying it in a makeshift torniquet as tight as she can. She looks up for Michonne, wondering why the other woman hasn't come to her aid yet, and when their eyes meet, they both freeze.

Michonne is standing watching Andrea, eyes wide, mouth slightly open as though she's about to speak but isn't sure what to say. Her knuckles are white on the handle of her sword, which is thoroughly coated in layers of congealed walker blood. Andrea gulps.

"No," she whispers, softly.

"Honey...I'm so sorry..." Michonne swallows thickly.

"The blade was clean," Andrea says, voice thin.

"We don't know the risk of contamination yet...if the blood got in to the wound..."

"The tip was clean," Andrea says, voice thin. "The tip was clean when it cut me, I saw it."

"Andrea..."

"It was clean!" Andrea snaps. She winces as she presses her handful of cotton down on her arm, and Michonne visibly softens.

"Here," the other woman says, and she lays her sword down and steps in to Andrea. She sits Andrea down on the bonnet of a burnt-out Sedan nearby and rummages through her bag for a half-full bottle of water. Andrea hisses as Michonne empties the water out on the cut, but stays still and compliant as her makeshift tank-top bandage is replaced with a torn strip from the bottom of Michonne's pants.

Andrea looks down at her arm. Aside from the cloth tied around her bicep, and some dried blood that has run down on the back of her hand, it's impossible to tell that she was ever wounded. She eyes off Michonne's sword again, warily, and tries to convince herself that the tip of the weapon was indeed clean when it cut her. It doesn't work. Her stomach clenches, sick and nervous.

"I'm sorry," Michonne whispers, softly, her hand cupping the side of Andrea's face. "You know it was an accident."

"I know," Andrea nods.

"You'll be fine," Michonne says, helping Andrea up. But when Andrea looks up to meet her eyes, Michonne looks away.

The next day, Andrea wakes with a fever.

At first she's ready to blame it on the weather but despite the fact that it's early morning, the air around them in the woods is humid and warm. Andrea's teeth chatter as she grabs a light sweater from her bag and pulls it on, only falling behind briefly as Michonne stalks ahead with her walkers in tow.

"You see something?" Michonne calls back to her, and Andrea shakes her head.

"No," she says, slinging the bag over her shoulder. "Just a bit cold."

Michonne, clad in a tank top and loose pants, looks her over quizzically.

"There's so much tree cover," Andrea says, forging ahead. "Can't wait to get out in to the sun. Come on."

Michonne shrugs and follows her companion, and Andrea doesn't turn back to look at her. It is just the tree cover, she tells herself. The air is always cooler around the trees than it is out in the sun. But as she walks on, she looks down at her hand, gripping the bag strap. The blood that flows under her skin, so close to the surface, has now become the enemy. She coughs once against her other hand, masking the sound lest Michonne overhear; then takes a deep breath and keeps walking.

Andrea falls asleep that night stretched across the lower branches of a tree; completely exhausted. She thinks of Jim, and how sick he was, sweating and convulsing in the back of the RV as they tried in vain to keep him comfortable. It got to the point where few people would go near him, afraid that he would transform in to something monstrous before their very eyes - his final days were spent alone and in pain, isolated from most of the group; before he finally begged to be left at the side of the road. Like a dying animal, Andrea thinks. She wonders on his final moments - what he thought about, what he felt. Whether he felt as alone and terrified as she does now, or whether he'd resigned himself to his fate and was happy to see the end of the dismal, miserable place that the world had become.

She shuts her eyes and wills herself not to cry. Who'd have predicted that after so long slow-dancing with the idea of death, she'd be so terrified to face it?

As they cross a corn field later the next day, Andrea can't stop herself from shivering. She takes a deep breath to steady herself but feels her head spin as she shuts her eyes - then, as soon as she opens her eyes again, the feeling is gone. She's still cold, but she has her balance back.

"Let's stop and eat," Andrea calls, short of breath from the walk.

"Edge of the field," Michonne responds, and Andrea nods.

They sit down on the edge as planned, the chained walkers left tied to a fence post. Like dogs, Andrea thinks. Like they've never been anything more than animals. She watches them wearily as she eats, stale Weetabix sticking to the roof of her mouth.

"How long did it take?" she says, suddenly.

Michonne frowns.

"For them to change," Andrea says, nodding at the walkers. "How long did it take for them to change?"

Michonne stiffens and takes another bite of Weetabix. "Not long," she says, softly. "Mike was the one who saved me, you know. I was chased and he - he fought the walker off. Neither of us knew what it meant when he got bitten. Thought he'd be fine."

Andrea's blood runs cold. Her fingers shake as she paws at her food, suddenly not hungry. "Do you think I'll really be okay?"

Michonne turns to her. "Honey...I honestly don't know."

The breeze stirs softly around them, the leaves of the woods whispering lightly in the wind. It would almost be a postcard-perfect Georgia day - golden ears of corn waving, birds chirping in the woods...Andrea squints in to the sunlight then looks away. Everything seems too bright, too saturated with colour. Her eyes hurt. She's about to suggest that they keep moving and find somewhere to spend the night, but as she opens her mouth, she freezes.

Coming from somewhere overhead, she can hear the unmistakable sound of a helicopter.

She looks to Michonne and Michonne looks back, eyes wide.

"What the...?" Andrea begins, and Michonne shakes her head. They jump in to standing, Andrea dizzily grabbing a fencepost as the mechanic whirring grows louder and louder. Their hair is whipped back from their faces as the chopper suddenly appears in the air above the cornfield, sending stalks of corn flying as it hovers.

"Hey," Michonne yells, suddenly stirred in to action. She runs forward in to the flattened corn, waving her arms. "HEY! Down here!"

Andrea joins her, frantically waving and yelling. From their proximity to the chopper, they can see the faces of the two men in the front seats. One of the men is jabbing frantically at the control panel, and the other is barking orders to him. It takes Andrea a while to realise that the whirring has gone from rhythmic to erratic.

"Wait," she says, grabbing Michonne's arm and pulling her back. The chopper hovers unevenly in the air for a minute, dipping down on the left side. Andrea watches as the men yell in to their headsets, looks of panic on their faces. "Get back."

They stumble back to the edge of the cornfield, watching in horror as the chopper suddenly dives in to a tailspin.

"Run!" Michonne grabs Andrea's arm and they head for the forest, instinctively covering their heads as they hear a bang and a deafening metal crunch from behind them.

With tree branches whipping across her face, Andrea gasps for breath as she lets Michonne drag her through the woods. She stumbles once, on a low tree root; then again on a rock, before finally falling to the ground in a heap when Michonne stops to sag against a tree.

"Jesus Christ," Michonne pants. "What the hell was that?"

Andrea's lungs burn from running, her breathy gasps turning in to a hacking cough as she gulps for oxygen. She puts a hand over her mouth out of habit, and feels a sticky liquid against her palm.

"Hey," Michonne says, righting herself and stepping over. "You okay?"

Andrea doesn't respond. She feels her gag reflex kick in and crawls to her hands and knees, hacking and spluttering, until an odd-looking bright yellow liquid drips from her lips. Michonne's hand lightly rubs her back, and she's vaguely aware of the other woman whispering comforting words, but she can't make them out.

"Oh God," Andrea moans, pitching forward to rest her head on the ground. She shuts her eyes and tries to catch her breath, wheezing against the leaves and dirt.

"Andrea? Are you alright?"

"I can't..."

"Andrea," Michonne's voice says, a thousand miles away. "Can you hear me?"

"Mmm," Andrea mumbles, falling to her side. "Let me breathe..."

"I need you to talk to me, tell me what's going on," Michonne says. "Can you do that? Andrea?"

"I don't want to be like them," Andrea begs, suddenly. "Please - I don't want to be like them. If I die, don't let me change. Please."

Michonne suddenly stands, eyes wide. "Andrea -" she barks, suddenly. "Get up. Get up."

"I can't," Andrea pants; and when Michonne's hands come down to lift her up, she pushes them away. "Leave me."

"Get up," Michonne says, pulling her to her feet. She loops one of Andrea's arms around her shoulder and begins to move again through the forest, back towards the cornfield. "I heard a car."

Andrea's dimly aware of her feet moving over the ground beneath them, but her head lolls to one side and she loses her balance, falling from Michonne's side against her tree.

"Please go," she says, blinking up towards Michonne's blurry form above her. She sees the woman's outline against the sun, doubling and tripling before her eyes. "Just leave me, don't cut me up like you did with them. Please just go."

Michonne sighs, angrily, and runs a hand through her hair. She takes off again towards the cornfield, sprinting, and Andrea lies down on the cool forest floor. The sunlight, even through the trees, is far too bright, so she shuts her eyes and breathes in to the blackness. Her lungs wheeze and rattle in her chest - this is what it must be like to die, she thinks. This is what happened to Jim. This is what the end feels like. She relaxes, suddenly, against the soft leaves. If there was any way to go, surely this is it? She avoided getting bitten. She avoided putting a gun to her head. She's just going to go to sleep, as though she was at home in her apartment, or in Daryl's tent with him; except this time she won't wake up.

She'll see Amy again. She'll see her parents. She'll be able to hold her mother again, and feel her father's lips on her forehead. She'll wrap her arms around her sister, bury her nose in that soft blonde hair, and never let go. She'll see Dale. She'll be able to thank him for everything he did for her. No more pain. No more trying to survive. It's all over.

She's not sure how long she lies there for, eyes shut, grey and white sparks exploding on the back of her eyelids, but she slowly becomes aware of a crunching noise headed towards her. Footsteps, on the leaves. She can hear Michonne's voice somewhere, frantic and yelling, and another's man's voice, yelling right back. They sound miles away; the footsteps sound much closer. But whoever it is walking in her direction is too late, she decides - she's already dead.

The crunching stops, right nearby her head, and she feels a boot nudge against her arm.

"Well, blow me down," says a man, and the voice sounds familiar to her. Her eyelids float open. "It's End O'The World Barbie."

"Daryl?" she whispers, voice hoarse.

The man laughs. Her eyes cross and un-cross, trying to focus on him, and she becomes dimly aware of a knife blade somewhere in her line of vision. "Try again, darlin'," the man says, and leans down closer, his features slowly coming in to focus. "Now. How about a big hug for your old pal Merle?"


	22. 31: Sunrise

The sun is beginning to rise over the horizon when Rick finally gives in.

"Let's stop," he sighs, his voice breaking the tension. He removes his hat for a second to run a hand over his face and brow. "We stop for a few hours, then...I guess we try to find our way back in the morning. We've come as far as we can."

Daryl nods. Rick slides down against the tree and falls in to a seated position, while Daryl stalks a small radius around the area. There's nothing - no animals, barely any insects, and no walkers to be found. It's quiet, eerily so. Unusually so. He casts one last glance around the small clearing before dropping his crossbow from his shoulder and opening his rucksack.

"Water," he says, shortly, handing the canteen to Rick. The other man gratefully takes it but after giving it a shake, realises how little is left in there. He shakes his head and hands it back to Daryl.

"You take it."

"Have it, I'm fine."

Rick sighs again and takes a small gulp, making sure to leave at least a small amount in the bottom. He swallows, licking his parched lips with the tiny amount of moisture that remains on his tongue, and turns his attention to Daryl. He watches as he methodically unpacks his bag - he removes his poncho and a spare shirt before revealing a small bag of nuts and two protein bars from the bottom of the bag. The spare shirt goes back in the bag, but Daryl throws the poncho around his shoulders before zipping back up.

"You seem well-packed," Rick says after a while, one eyebrow raised. "You thought we'd be out here for a while, then?"

Daryl shrugs. "Can't hurt to come prepared."

"I said we'd be back by the morning."

"Well, we ain't," Daryl says, bristling. "You've been leadin' us 'round in circles out here. Of course we're gonna get lost. We'll find our way back, just would've been a damn sight easier if you'd known which way you were goin' to begin with."

"Look, I know what I saw," Rick snaps. "But it was impossible to tell where the chopper went down, it was beyond the treeline. We won't find it today. But I say we go back, get supplies, and return - try to find it again -"

Daryl shakes his head almost imperceptably, and Rick glares at him.

"Something you want to add, Daryl?"

"Only that I think you're takin' us on a wild goose chase," he mutters, his eyes not meeting Rick's.

"Think for a minute, Daryl," Rick snaps. "This could be a change for all of us. This could be what saves us. If there's someone or something out there with the resources to run a helicopter, think of what else they could have. Maybe there is a military base after all, or a city of some kind that still has power -"

"Yeah, or maybe it's Geraldo Rivera in the fuckin' Fox News chopper, come down to film a report."

Rick opens his mouth to speak, eyes ablaze, and then seems to reconsider. He takes a breath, steadying himself; and regards Daryl for a moment before he speaks again. "You're a good man, Daryl," he says, firmly. "I respect you. And you deserve that respect. You've earnt it - from all of us. Not just me. And I need you - we all need you - to stay on side. And help out. I brought you out here with me for a reason, you know that. There's no way I could find my way around out here alone, let alone find my way back. I'm asking for your help. We get back to the prison, pick up supplies, and come back out. We try again."

Daryl is silent for a moment. He looks Rick over. Sitting up against the tree like that, tired and wan, he looks almost as ruined as he was when Daryl first met him. Skinny and looking as though he really had just crawled out of a hospital bed, Daryl had taken one look at Rick and decided he wasn't going to last a day. And yet...here they are.

"Think of the others," Rick reasons. "They need you too. Glenn, and Hershel...Carol...Lori and Carl, and the baby..."

There's something about the way Rick says Carol's name that makes Daryl angry. Something about the intonation Rick uses, or the way his eyes seem to look right through in to Daryl's skull for the tiniest of seconds when he spoke. But then the man's face softens completely as soon as he says Lori's name, and that makes Daryl even angrier.

"S'long as the Grimes family is all safe," Daryl whispers.

Rick's eyes harden, and he stands slowly. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Whatever it is inside of Daryl that's been allowing him to bite his tongue and stay silent through this whole fruitless hike through the woods, the entire drive from the farm to the prison, and the weeks and months after they left Merle behind in Atlanta; finally snaps. "Means that so long as you and Lori are happy, that's all that matters to you. You couldn't give a fuck about the rest of us. You barely searched a damn day for Sophia. You left Merle chained to a rooftop -"

"We went back for him!" Rick yells, outraged.

"You went back for your guns!" Daryl counters, pacing the ground.

"I did the right thing -"

"Your version of what's right changes every day," Daryl growls. "You killed Shane, was that the right thing?"

Rick swallows. "I did what I thought was best for the group."

"Yeah? And Andrea, what about Andrea?" Daryl instantly regrets saying her name, because he can feel a rage building in himself that he hasn't felt since the day he found out that Merle had been left in Atlanta. "You think that was best for the group, leavin' her alone back at the farm?"

"Once we realised she was gone, it was too late to turn back," Rick says, steadily. "She would have been either dead or gone by the time we got back there, and -"

"You abandoned her!" Daryl roars, his nose inches away from Rick's. Rick flinches, but doesn't back down. His eyes don't leave Daryl's as he places a hand on the other man's shoulder in an attempt to calm him down.

"If I had thought for a second there was a chance that she'd still be there, I would have gone back, Daryl," Rick says. "You have to know that."

"Carol said she went down as you drove away from her," Daryl hisses, not letting up.

"I never saw her -"

"You sure?" Daryl barks.

"Yes I'm sure!" Rick yells, outraged. "Don't put this on me -"

"What would you have done if it was Lori?" Daryl asks, interrupting. "If it was her who got left behind?"

"Why didn't you go back for her then?" Rick cries, dodging the question. "Instead of Carol? You didn't think to ask where she was? You didn't think to look?"

Daryl breathes hard through his teeth as he fights to contain the anger that coarses through his veins. "I only realised she was gone when I got to the road. If I'd have known before that, I wouldn't've left without her."

"So you're in the same boat as the rest of us!" Rick yells. "You could've gone back as easy as anyone else!"

"Yeah, but I -"

"So don't try to make out like her blood's one my hands when you know it isn't. You could have chosen to go back but you didn't -"

"Because of you!" Daryl roars, finally snapping. His hands fly up to Rick's shoulders and he shoves him backwards, hard, against the tree. He steels himself for Rick to return with a punch but he doesn't - he catches his breath, startled, then rights himself and slides down the tree trunk slowly, back in to sitting. He presses his thumbs to his eyes, takes a breath, and looks back up at Daryl, exhausted.

Daryl snarls at him and turns away, pacing again through the leaves. "That baby ain't even yours, and you know it," he hisses, curling his lip at Rick.

Rick only shuts his eyes and lowers his chin, defeated; and Daryl steps off in to the trees, watching the morning light beginning to filter through the leaves. It casts a soft lavender light on the ground beneath Daryl's feet and he stills, trying to control his breathing and bring himself back down. Behind him, Rick takes off the hat - that damn Sheriff's hat that he's been wearing since they first met him - and lays it in the dirt. He swipes a hand over his face and takes a slow breath.

"Come back, Daryl," he finally calls.

Daryl pauses and turns, glances back over his shoulder at Rick. He walks slowly back in to the clearing and leans against a tree, hands in pockets, watching the other man.

Rick swallows and takes a deep breath, staring at the ground as he speaks. "I've always tried to be a good man. ...I don't know if I've succeeded. But I've tried. I've tried to be a good enough man for Lori, and for Carl...and for the rest of you too. I never wanted this...any of it. I'm just trying to do my best in this situation that we've all found ourselves pushed in to. I've tried to do the best with my lot in life but the truth is...some days I do think we'd all have been better off if I just never woke up. Lori, Carl, Shane...all of us."

Daryl frowns, turning the words over in his head. Rick looks up to him, eyes rimmed with red. "You know...I always thought it was Carol," he says softly. "Am I wrong?"

There's a long pause, so long that Daryl himself doesn't think he'll actually be able to speak. But he does. "Yes," he says, simply.

Rick nods. "Andrea," he sighs. "There were some mornings when I went looking for her, tried to find her in her tent, and she just wasn't there. Then Lori said she saw her coming out of yours one morning, and I...don't know what I thought of it, truthfully. I guess I didn't think on it all that much. Not enough, anyway."

Heart pounding in his chest, Daryl pushes off the tree and moves to walk - where? Somewhere. Anywhere. Why does he suddenly feel so trapped, so scrutinised?

Rick stands slowly. "I'm sorry, Daryl," he says, genuinely, meeting the other man's eyes. "...I haven't been the kind of friend to you that you've been to me. If that were Lori, I would have gone back. I understand...and I'm sorry." He stretches his right hand out expectantly and Daryl regards it. He imagines himself shaking it - _it's okay that I never saw my brother again after you took him to Atlanta._ Shake. _It's okay that I almost died looking for Sophia._ Shake. _It's okay that I held a gun to Dale's head and pulled the trigger._ Shake. _It's okay that I turned my back on the only woman I've ever cared about, ever loved, for you._ Shake.

Daryl frowns, looks up at Rick. And keeps his own hands firmly in his pockets. "We ain't friends," he hisses.

His feet take him away, through the trees, in to the glaring sun that has now risen over the horizon. He pushes through a thicket of bush and steps out - then grabs a nearby tree and rights himself, because less than a few inches in front of the toe of his boot is a six-foot-drop down on to a field. He breathes out slowly, regaining his balance, and looks up and across the expanse of green. He takes in the few skinny cows that wander aimlessly through the grass. The tractor that lies abandoned. The corral with the broken fence. And then -

"Daryl," Rick's voice is at his ear, but Daryl holds a hand up to silence the man.

"Look," he whispers, pointing across the field. Rick follows his hand, and takes a sharp breath in.

Because past the cows, and the hay, and the corral; just on the horizon, heading steadily towards a cluster of small buildings, is a convoy of trucks.


	23. 71: Broken

It's past midnight when Daryl finally snaps.

He's not sure what it is that breaks him. It could be the combination of an empty stomach, nerves too shot to eat; or the fact that he hasn't slept in over a day, despite feeling beyond exhausted in mind and body. It could be the ache in his side of a wound not-yet healed, or the itch of stitches that pull and worry, and still have to be left in for another week. His encounter with Andrea certainly isn't helping at all, it's been over a day since he last spoke to her and his knee still burns where she rested her hand on it. His cheeks still burn, more to the point, when he thinks about the stupid, reckless risk he took in spitting out the words that had been on his tongue since the day he first spoke to her. And her - leaning up towards him, asking him to kiss her - he didn't expect that. Almost didn't want it. Because he had no idea what to do with that, how to respond. So he'd said nothing, done nothing, only pushed her away and left her there; left her alone to hopefully decide that Daryl Dixon was an asshole who she would never speak to again.

He tries to think of Shane now, whenever he thinks of her. He tries to imagine how Shane would have fucked her (for some reason, it makes him sick to his stomach to imagine that Shane looked her in the eyes when he did it, so he imagines that he took her from behind) and tries to imagine how Andrea's name would sound on Shane's lips. But try as he might, the anger he feels when he imagines them together never quite eclipses what he feels when he thinks back to Andrea beside the campfire. Kiss me, she had said. Had she wanted it as much as he had? What would that even mean, if she did?

Daryl growls and rolls over in his sleeping bag, throwing an arm over the side of his head. What's playing on his mind more than anything is that he can hear her - Carol - in the RV. Crying. Sobbing, to be precise. She's been weeping for longer than he cares to measure, and not once has he heard the door of the RV open, not once has he heard anyone's footsteps crossing the camp to go and check on her.

And _that's_ what breaks him.

He sits up quickly, pushing his sleeping bag off him. His pillow tumbles out to the side and he turns around, grabs it, and drives his fist in to its thin, downy middle. He pummels it, again and again, rage coarsing through his veins - _Sophia. Merle. Andrea. Carol._ No good ever came from caring about someone. Only worry and anger, heartbreak and lonliness. He digs his fingers in to the cotton and rips, sending gasps of feathers tumbling across the floor of his tent. Still he continues; ripping and tearing until there's almost nothing left but a pathetic pile of white cotton.

And when he catches his breath, and the blood stops pounding in his ears, he can still hear Carol's weak cries.

A rush of cold air enters behind him as he steps in to the RV, and he shuts the door quickly to prevent any more heat escaping. When his eyes adjust to the darkness, he makes out her thin form curled up on the bed, with her arms around a pillow. He can't see her face. And just for a second, he thinks he doesn't want to - doesn't want to see greif writ raw across her features. Hearing it, hearing it in her cries, is hard enough.

"Carol," he whispers, once he gets his voice working.

She hiccups, moving slightly so she can see him. "Daryl?"

"Yeah."

She pushes the pillow away slightly and sits up, propping herself up on one arm. Her face is streaked with tears, the skin on her cheeks fire-red and blotchy. Her eyes are bloodshot and her lashes drenched; and on her collarbones he makes out trails of tears that have trickled all the way down from her eyes to the edge of her cardigan. She hiccups again and reaches out for him, her small hand extending in the darkness.

He's not sure what makes him do it - the concept of comfort couldn't be more foreign to him - but he steps towards the bed, reaches out for her in turn; and sits down next to her, bundling her in to his arms when she crawls helplessly towards him across the thin sheets. Her head finds a space to rest on his chest, between his chin and shoulder, and her tangle themselves in his shirt front.

"I'm sorry," he says, weakly, and she nods against him. He can feel fresh tears on her cheeks, wetting the worn collar of his shirt, but he doesn't care. His hand clumsily finds her temple and he holds her to his chest, stroking the hair there. "I'm so sorry."

"She's gone," Carol whispers breathlessly, voice thin. "My little girl. My daughter. She's gone."

"Wasn't your fault," Daryl says, almost instantly; and Carol begins to cry harder against him, but soundlessly - her mouth open in a silent scream, trembling in his arms. "_Wasn't your fault_, I promise," he says, again, wrapping his arms tighter around her; rocking her gently from side to side as she weeps.

The sun's peering over the horizon when she finally falls asleep in his arms; and it's shining low but strong by the time he figures out how to lie her down in the bed without waking her.

He steps out of the RV, squinting in to the light; and in the back of his mind somewhere there is a dim realisation that this is the second sunrise he's seen without having slept the night before. He turns around to shut the door, inching it closed against the doorframe quietly; and as he stifles a yawn, he turns back towards the yard only to discover the person he's been trying to avoid the most.

"Daryl," Andrea begins. Her hair hangs loose around her face and she wears a thin, long-sleeved top over her normal tank-top-and-khaki attire. "I'm glad I found you. I was going to check on Carol."

Daryl nods once, swallows; and then realises she's probably expecting a response. "She's sleeping," he says, brusquely; and Andrea nods.

"Good," she says. "That's good. Can I...talk to you?"

"Don't have nothin' much to say," he says.

Andrea crosses her arms in front of her. She looks about as uncomfortable as he feels, which gives him some small relief. "Then let me say something?" She takes a deep breath. "I wanted to...apologise to you. For what happened the other night. I've obviously misinterpreted something, and thought there may have been something there when there wasn't. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable. I just thought - look, it doesn't matter. The point is, we'd both had something to drink, and we were both tired; and I'd hate for one drunken mistake to get in the way of us being friends. Or, at least, co-operative members of this camp. So let's...forget it all ever happened?"

She looks hopeful as she makes her offering, eyebrows raised and lips pressed together.

"So it means nothin', right?"

"Right," she says, but her eyes don't meet his when she speaks. "We'll forget all about it. Move on. Be just friends."

"Like how you'n Shane are friends?" Daryl says, low. "That kinda friends?"

"Daryl..." Andrea sighs. She frowns and uncrosses her arms, placing her hands on her hips. "I didn't come here for you to make judgements on who -"

"You think of me the same way you think of Shane?" Daryl interrupts, stepping in closer to her. She's shorter than him but not by much; her head comes up level with his shoulder. And it's that she looks at, avoiding his eyes as he speaks. "You think of me like that?"

"Not...exactly like that," she says. "Different."

"How?"

Her voice is breathy when she responds. "For starters, Shane was a once-off in the front seat of the car. That's not how I imagined it with you."

Daryl suddenly has a vision of the girls he and Merle used to see in bars back home. Merle was a completely different kind of drunk to Daryl - after one too many, Daryl found himself getting sleepy and introspective, but Merle was the total opposite. Merle would harrass the women to breaking point, snapping their cheap pull-up stockings and cat-calling them until he wound up with a patent stiletto to the groin.

"How did you imagine it?" Daryl says, and somewhere in the back of his mind, Merle is wiping down his face after having a wine spritzer thrown in to it, and laughing: _all these bitches're the same, little brother. Nun in public, whore in the bedroom. You'll see._

"Just different," Andrea says, and she doesn't step back when Daryl steps in. Her eyes meet his as she speaks. "I'd never thought about being with Shane before it happened. It was just adrenaline; I needed a release. But...I had thought about you. I'd thought about you."

Lo and behold, those women always ended up in Merle's bed. No matter if they'd screamed him down and called him every name under the sun, or had been reduced to a mascara-sodden crying wreck from his taunts; he always managed to pull something out of his hat before last call and he'd stumble out of the bar with a girl on his arm; those cheap white-pleather skirts finding space on the back of his bike before they roared off in to the night. Daryl made the long way home, taking his bike down miles of highway, through forests and over rivers, before he finally parked next to Merle's machine and stepped inside. Ordinarily, the women would be gone; but occasionally they'd still be there, shoes by the door and items of clothing strewn throughout the house on the way to the bedroom. On one occasion, Daryl walked past Merle's room on the way to his own and found the door wide open, Merle buck-naked on top of whatever nameless honey he'd dragged home that night. The belt was still looped loosely around her bicep. Her skinny legs were wrapped around his hips, fishnet stockings torn in places over her tan skin; and Merle thrust in between those legs, producing moans and squeaks from the girl as he fucked her in to the mattress. She peeped over his shoulder at one point and her eyes met Daryl's, spider-like lashes winking down over her cheek as she called out an invitation for him to join in.

Daryl pulled the door shut immediately; but there was something about the image that always stuck with him. And Andrea, standing in front of him now, isn't so different to that woman, he supposes. She's not as bone-skinny, and her skin is naturally tan, rather than patchy with make-up; but her lips are just as full and he can make out the curve of her cleavage just as easily.

"C'mon, then," he says, and despite his sudden courage, even he is surprised when he hears her footsteps follow him back to his tent.

In the early-dawn light, Andrea's skin is dappled with blue from the tarpaulin walls. She pulls off her top as Daryl undoes the laces on his boots, and as she slides it over her head he takes in the curve of her body. This can't be so hard. He thinks of all the women Merle's had, countless numbers of them. The ease at which he would collect them. Their willingness to give themselves to him. The way they all scurried out the door at sunrise.

Andrea's skin is softer than he expected, when his fingers trace a path down her cheek. The girls who danced in the club downtown always had strange skin, almost scaly with tan, and the small creases on the older ones' faces seemed to fill up with bronze powder as the night went on.

"This what you expected?" Daryl says, suddenly; when he sees her eyes downcast. "This what you wanted?"

Andrea opens her mouth and then closes it again, shrugging. "I don't know yet," she says, softly. She reaches out to him and strokes her hand down his arm softly, feather-light touches dancing along his forearm and over the soft skin on the inside of his wrist. Her fingers stop when she reaches his hand, her index finger pressing lightly on the star at the base of his thumb. She smiles, and her eyes flicker up to meet his.

He reaches out and slides his hand on to the back of her neck, pulling her in close. He half-expected her to smell like Merle's women, all fake floral scents mixed with dope; but perfume is a thing of the past these days, he reminds himself. Andrea smells lightly of sweat mixed with laundry powder; a scent so light that Daryl barely picks up on it.

He grabs for the hair at the back of her head and tugs it down lightly, exposing her neck. This is what he had imagined - tracing his tongue over her soft throat and hearing her whisper his name. To hear his named moaned from her lips would almost be too much; but he leans in anyway, presses his lips to her collarbone, and traces upwards from there. He darts his tongue out and licks at the cords of her throat, making her shiver in his hands, but aside from a few breathy sighs, she remains silent. He brushes his lips over her ear and feels her hand curl around his bicep, pulling him in closer; and when he traces his nose along her cheekbone, that hand slips lower and winds up somewhere on his hip.

They wind up nose-to-nose and his eyes meet hers for a long moment. Her eyes are dark, and he can feel her light breath against his lips. She smiles at him, a small smile, and exhales shakily. That's the only difference between her and Merle's women, Daryl realises - they never smiled. They pouted, and flirted, and cooed; but never smiled. Daryl had taken pity on one of them, once. A younger girl. She'd been walking along the gravel road back to town, tottering from side to side in her ridiculous high-heeled shoes. So he pulled his bike over, handed her the helmet, and gave her a ride. They were going in the same direction, so it seemed only fair. But it was only after he pulled over to let her off, and she removed the helmet, that he saw she had cried the whole way home.

Andrea moves suddenly; lifting her hand to the graze on his temple. The graze she caused. She strokes the pad of her thumb softly against the reddened skin, then brushes her fingers through his hair lightly. When her hand reaches the back of his head, she pulls him towards her, leans in, and presses her lips to his. He struggles for a breath, suddenly aware of how hard his right hand is gripping her hair; how hard the nails on his left hand are digging in to his own thigh; and how soft her lips are, pressed against his. She moves slightly and captures his bottom lip between her teeth; then ever-so-slightly slides her tongue out and swipes it along his lip where her teeth were only seconds before. It makes him shiver.

He tries to think about Merle and his women, and what Merle would do next in this situation; but for some strange reason, he can't. Whenever he shuts his eyes, all he can think of is Sophia.

Sophia, staggering out of the barn, all rigor-mortis limbs and dead, quiet eyes. Sophia's freckled skin mottled with dried blood, and her soft, wavy hair tangled and matted. He tries to push her from his mind but he can't, it's as though the image is tattooed on the back of his eyelids. He wonders how far those knobbly child knees took her through the forest before she got bitten. He can't imagine that she was silent when she was chased - why didn't he hear her cry out? Why wasn't he there? He wonders where she got bitten, and how much it hurt. He wonders what she thought of in her final minutes, if she cried for her mother or if she simply prayed to a god that never listened. He wonders how long she'd been in that barn for, the only child amongst all of those walkers; before she was let out.

He'd never seen a dead child before.

And it's that last thought that breaks him, for the second time.

He gasps and pulls away from Andrea's lips suddenly, pushing her back with a hand to her shoulder.

"Daryl?" she squeaks, rocking backwards.

He covers his mouth with one hand, pressing hard against where her lips were not seconds ago. "Get out," he rasps, voice shaky, dropping his hand.

"What? I don't -"

"I said, get -" he barks, but his voice betrays him and breaks mid-way. "Get out." He tries again but it's too late, he can swallow around the lump in his throat but he can't pretend it's not there. He presses his hand to his eyes this time, swiping at the tears welling up there. "Get out!"

"Are you okay...?" Andrea leans in, reaching for his forearm, and he bats her away.

"Get out! Go," he says again, but he can feel himself crumbling in front of her. He drops his chin to his chest, desperate to be away from her gaze. She can't see this - can't be here to see him crying like a child, all over a lost little girl. "Please. Go -"

He presses the heel of his hand to his eyes and wills himself to calm down, to not lose his shit like this in front of a girl - or anyone, for that matter. Andrea reaches up to touch his wrist and her fingers wrap around it slowly, guiding it gently towards her. Her teeth find her bottom lip as she watches him. "Sophia," she says; not asking. Her fingers curl between his and she holds his hand loosely in her lap.

"Shane was probably right," Daryl says, eventually. He steadies himself, and sniffs, using his free hand to wipe at his eyes. "Maybe she did see me coming -" (he takes a short, unsteady, breath) "- maybe she did run."

"Don't say that," Andrea whispers, shifting forward on her knees. She reaches out to him and pulls him in to her arms, stroking her fingers through his hair. With his cheek pressed against the crook of her neck, she can't see him, can't see his sadness; so he lets his tears fall freely, breath hitching uncontrollably in his chest. "Shane couldn't have been more wrong. You looked so hard for her...you did all you could. She'd have come to you if she had the chance, Daryl. It wasn't your fault that we lost her. It wasn't your fault."

It's dark when he wakes, and for a moment he loses his bearings, forgetting where he is and what time it is. His arms are curled around something, and he shifts to rub the sleep from his eyes before he makes out the shape against him in the darkness.

Andrea: lying curled against him, her head resting on his arm. Her tank top is rucked up around her torso, and her lips are plump and bruised. He remembers stroking his hands over that skin, rocking her against him; tasting his own tears on her lips. They had fallen asleep eventually, drained of energy and emotion; and at some point the sun must've set and the day ended. Daryl briefly wonders about Rick, if he had come looking for either of them; but he puts the thought out of his mind. He lies back down, cautiously; and wraps his other arm around Andrea, fingertips coming to rest beneath her navel. She shifts slightly in his arms and moves back against him, burrowing her head against the crook of his elbow.

For once, his mind is blank - no Shane. No sound of Carol's weeping. No images of Sophia. Andrea stirs against him, murmuring in his sleep, and whispers his name softly - "Daryl" - just once. He presses his lips to the back of her neck softly, pulls her closer against him, and shuts his eyes.


	24. 82: If

Carol comes in while he's packing.

He's midway between deciding if he'll need a spare shirt or not, when he hears her enter the cell behind him. She leans on the barred door and sighs softly - he's known the conversation would happen, so he ignores her for the moment, lets her make the first move.

She regards him for a moment and watches him throw extra socks in to the rucksack open on his bunk, before she finally speaks.

"So, you're going?"

He turns. Her skinny arms are folded over her chest, and he can see the slight outline of her ribs, visible through her thin tank top. Her jeans sit low on her hips; she seems threadbare, delicate.

"Yeah," he says, gruffly. "Just for a day or so."

She sighs again and steps in to the cell, appearing at his left. "You really think it's a good idea?"

Daryl shrugs. "We need supplies...we're runnin' low on food. Rick knows what he saw; he said the chopper didn't go down too far from here."

"And what do you think you're going to find when you get there?"

"Could be other people...the military. Could be help," he offers. "Lori's due any day now; Rick's starting to worry. If there's others out there, they could help us."

"Do you really think there was a helicopter?" Carol says, softly.

Daryl shrugs. "I didn't see it, but I ain't about to doubt it. Never thought I'd see dead things runnin' around either, but there you go." He zips up the rucksack and lifts it with one hand. It's not so heavy.

"So neither you or Rick are worried about leaving the rest of us here?"

"You'll be fine," Daryl says, dismissively. "You're a good shot, and you know it. You've got Maggie, Glenn, Carl...you'll be fine. I know it." He reaches down under the bunk and finds his spare pair of boots. He squashes them down slightly and opens the rucksack again, sliding them in on top. The zipper only does up half-way before it bursts open again and the tops of the boots poke through. Frustrated, Daryl squashes them down again; but Carol quietly reaches over and puts one hand on top of the boots, the other on the zipper, and holds them down as she slides the zipper over. The rucksack closes.

"Thanks," Daryl says, quietly. He doesn't move for a moment; just watches her hand next to his on the bag. Eventually, she slides her hand over carefully, covering his.

"I don't think you're going to find her out there, Daryl," she whispers.

He swallows, once. "You need to eat somethin'," he says, at length. "You're looking skinny."

Her response comes whispered. "You know I can't sometimes."

Daryl turns to look at her. Carol's eyes are as blue as ever, a brilliant cerulean; but sad. She's looked heavy with sadness ever since they buried Sophia, and try as he might, Daryl can't seem to shift the feeling from her. Her hair is getting longer now, and slightly greyer at the sides. She looks like she needs a good night's sleep and a meal; but Daryl has seen that it doesn't always come easy for her.

He raises his hand slowly, intending to stroke his fingers down the length of her jawbone; but she flinches ever-so-slightly. Daryl sighs. He understands; but it still twists in his gut that Ed's marks are still left on her after all this time. Maybe not physically, but inside.

"I keep on tryin' to figure out what to do with you," he whispers, his eyes on her collarbone. "What you want from me. Never can, no matter how much I try."

"I'm sorry," she says, instantly.

"I ain't askin' for an apology," he returns.

He lifts his hand to her, again, and this time she doesn't move. He cups her face and strokes her cheek softly with his thumb, swiping down along sharp cheekbones. She shuts her eyes slowly and sighs, the corners of her mouth pulling down. She's always freaked him out a bit, in a way that Andrea never did. Andrea was all sass and smart-mouth response, a mean shot with a pistol and a killer right hook. She was curves and lips and piercing eyes; her sexuality and attitude out there for all to see. And she had her raw moments, for sure - Daryl had had her in his tent crying over her sister or the state of the world enough times to see that there was a more sensitive side to her - but she was tough, through it all. That's what got her so far. When he looks at Carol, when he tries to find that tough side, he can't. And he wonders what's gotten her through everything this far, what she's been hanging on to.

He brings her in towards him slowly, and presses his lips to her forehead. He feels her soft breath on his neck, feels her hands reach up to his sides and stay there. She curls herself in to his chest, ducking her head under his chin; and he shuts his eyes as he winds his hands around to her back and holds her there. Her breath is shaky against his chest, and when she finally pulls back from him, she doesn't move far. He returns his hand to cup her face again, and ducks in towards her; hesitating only slightly before he presses his lips to hers.

Her lips remain closed, trembling only slightly under his, before she sniffs and pulls back.

"You should go," she whispers, her hand falling down to his.

"Yeah," he murmurs, and shoulders the rucksack with his spare hand. She releases his fingers and crosses her arms over her chest, sitting down lightly on the edge of the bunk. "You'll be okay."

She nods. "Go," she urges.

He watches her for one last second, taking in her slim frame and shining eyes. He doesn't know what to make of what happened; can't figure out where she falls on the scale of his feelings - somewhere between what he feels for Andrea and what he feels for, say, Lori. But when he gets back from his mission with Rick, he'll make sure to pay better attention to her. Make sure she eats enough, is sleeping properly. He'll talk to her, find out what she's thinking, see what he can do. He's been so preoccupied hating himself for leaving Andrea out there that he's almost forgotten about her, forgotten that she sometimes hates herself for leaving someone alone out there too.

He steps out of the cell and heads down the landing towards the stairs; where Rick waits at the bottom for him. His footfalls are heavy on the metal stairs, boots loud. He doesn't turn around - he doesn't see Carol watching him from the cell door. He doesn't hear her whisper his name. He doesn't hear her whisper goodbye.


	25. 96: Brother

_Merle inhales, once, a breath dragged in between gritted teeth._

_He's been feeling good, lately, really good; the best he's felt since he was fourteen or fifteen and throwing kicks and punches with the big guys in the MMA gym downtown. He remembers the endorphins that flooded his small frame after a really good workout; the flex of muscle, the smell of sweat in the air, the heavy-fisted male camaraderie that came with finding an escape from the run-down and gritty world somewhere within the four walls of the gym. He's found those endorphins again, on a grander scale, since; but they came with a needle in his arm or a pipe between his teeth and he doesn't have that any more, can't get it here. So those chemical highs gave way to a new high, once he started working out again and feeling alive and ignoring some of the scum that rattles down the hallways at the Sumpter County Jail. Most of the guys are alright, just like him; in for grand theft auto or drug charges or robberies, little things like that. An occasional few of them are pedophiles, or so they say, and Merle and his gang find them after dark, heavy fists pounding in to jawbones. The guards pretend not to notice._

_So Merle's riding on a high today, a natural high; as he's guided down the hallway towards the administrative offices. He's brought to the Prison Chaplain office and positioned in front of the door; when the guard behind him raises one hand and raps sharply on the door frame._

_Phillip opens the door wide. He's clad in a plain white shirt with his standard padded vest over the top, and a pair of khaki trousers. His face looks tired, drawn; but his eyes are penetrating, and his smile, when he sees Merle, is - as far as he can tell - genuine._

_"Merle," he says, stepping back and gesturing with one arm. "Come in, come in."_

Merle steps through the door and in to Phillip's office. The Governor's Mansion, the boys call it; some ironically and some not. A heap of paper is scattered over the table, blueprints and serif fonts briefly catch Merle's eye as he passes it. Phillip directs him through the rooms and towards his desk, which he sits behind as Merle takes the seat in front. A small glass of whiskey sits on the desk, and Phillip sips it periodically as he speaks.

"You sober?" he asks, voice hard. Merle opens his mouth to respond and at the last second, Phillip's eyes dart up towards him, his lips curve in to a smile, and he lets out a bark of laughter. He's kidding; joking around.

"Smoked a bit last night," Merle says, honestly.

"Well," Phillip laughs. "We all have our vices, don't we?" He sips the whiskey demonstrably and shrugs, hands wide, palm up. He gives the impression of being a school bully whose gang has only just accepted you, or a bad boss who you know is watching you every second of the day.

"Now, you know why I've called you in to speak with you, don't you?" Phillip asks, suddenly. "You know that your brother's here."

_"Merle," Father Christopher opens the door, a small smile dancing across his lips. "Merle Dixon. Why don't you come on in?"_

_There's a small moment as Merle steps in over the threshold, when the guard behind him starts to move in as well. Merle turns over his shoulder and opens his mouth in a sneer; but Father Christopher simply smiles and motions for the man to leave. He'll take it from here, he says._

_Father Christopher is an older man, about as old as Merle's father would probably be these days. He has more sparkle, though, more life; even when Merle has seen him walking with rapists and murderers, his lips still curve upwards in a smile, his eyes still connect, as though he's talking to a King, some kind of a great man, rather than the common dregs of society you'd find on any street corner back home. He looks in to the face of every prisoner who resides in those cell blocks and remembers their names, their first names, and he addresses them all as such. There's a quiet respect given to him because of this; some determination amongst the prisoners to never betray the trust he's placed in them simply by walking among them._

_"Sit down, Merle, sit down," the Father says, and he takes a seat as well, sitting on the edge of his desk. Merle sits in the chair directly in front of the desk and the Father gives him another small smile; lips pressed together, eyes kind. "You and I haven't spoken like this before, have we? One-on-one?"_

_"No Sir," Merle says, and he says Sir even though he doesn't mean to, sounds cocky even though he doesn't mean to either. Probably habit._

_"No," Father Christopher repeats again. He presses his eyes shut for a moment as though he is thinking, and raises his two index fingers, in a pistol formation, to his lips. He sits for a moment in silence then opens his eyes again. "You know, your younger brother is here today, to visit. Daryl - that's his name, correct?"_

"Yeah," Merle says, slowly. "Yeah, I know that."

"And you know, of course, that for us to take in visitors, is a rarity. Present company excluded, of course. You, Andrea, and Michonne have been the only visitors we've accepted in recent times."

"Yeah."

"Now, ordinarily I'd be quite happy for your brother and his friend to stick around, make themselves a part of our community. But, we know that they already have a community of their own, don't they?"

Merle swallows as imperceptibly as he can. Daryl never told him that; never mentioned anything about a little 'community'. He gets a sudden image of Daryl and Rick, sitting around a campfire with the people from the quarry outside Atlanta. Grilling fish with the old guy who never took an eye off Merle. Sipping cocoa with the coon who left him chained on the roof, living walker bait.

"Oh - you didn't know that?" Phillip asks, head tilted, like a hound picking up a scent. For once, Merle is speechless. He wishes he hadn't smoked the night before - made his head cloudy, made it hard to think. "Your brother and his pal Rick have taken over a prison, not too far from here. Got a little group with them, 'bout twenty in number."

"I knew it," Merle says, staring him down.

"Andrea told me that, you know," Phillip says, voice soft. "Daryl begged her to go back with him. And she came straight to me as soon as she found out what they were keeping from us."

"Did she?" Merle says, slowly. He thinks back to the night outside the gate when he found Daryl and Rick, to the looks on their faces when he had said Andrea's name, said that she was there with them. All the times he had watched Daryl watching her back outside of Atlanta, eyes fixed on the blonde, staring at her from across the camp. Of course he'd take to her like a lost dog as soon as Merle was gone, out of the way. Of course he'd blab to her. Merle should have known something was up - he should've guessed, should've expected that it was pussy that kept Daryl from finding him chained to that rooftop in Atlanta. No doubt Blondie had wanted her man home and safe with her, and Daryl had obliged - throwing away all familial loyalty for ice queen snatch. Probably was even glad to have him, Merle, out of the way so he could make his move.

"Now, I had expected that the moment you had known anything about an enemy settlement outside our town, you'd have come to me, Merle," Phillip says, slowly. "I would have expected your loyalty, after all that we've done for you."

Merle takes a slow breath in. "I -"

"Why was it that I had to find this information out from Andrea? Didn't you see it fit to let me know of a threat? Or did you have plans to return with your brother, as well? To leave us without so much as a...goodbye?"

_"Darlena's here?" Merle says, with a confused laugh. "Why's that?"_

_Father Christopher sighs almost inaudibly and looks at Merle for a moment. "Your brother's here, Merle, because I have the very unfortunate responsibility of informing you that something has happened at home."_

_Merle straightens in his chair. There's that one feeling that can't be avoided with all the natural highs in the world. He suddenly thinks that he'd give anything to be high once more, to never have to feel that feeling again. He thinks about his brother, at home in his bedroom, on the other side of the door with the broken lock; ducking from his father's drunken fists and trying to escape his rages. Never could throw a punch, the kid. Merle told him to look out for himself and Ma while Merle was gone; but he never listened either, just sat around saying nothing and thinking everything, in that infuriating way that made Merle want to shake him._

_He takes a breath and nods; tries to play it off cool. "It's about my Daddy, then?" he asks, resigned. He wonders what shape Daryl will be in when he sees him._

_"No, Merle, I'm very sorry to tell you that it's about your mother," Father Christopher says. Merle shifts in his chair again, a cold sensation in the pit of his stomach. The Father is by no means a slow speaker, but every word that falls from his lips seems to move as slowly as a glacier. "It's not good news, Merle. I'm afraid to say that she passed away yesterday evening."_

Merle tries to think as fast as he can. "No," he says, then doubles back. "I -"

"Merle, I'm going to be honest with you," Phillip says, standing. He paces slowly towards the front of the desk and sits on the corner, the glass of whiskey in his hand. He rocks it backwards and forwards between his fingers, letting the residue in the bottom slide from side to side. "You know our rule about enemy camps. You know how we have to treat them, to ensure our survival - to ensure the survival of all of our people."

Merle swallows; his mouth suddenly dry. It's all too much - Daryl and Rick, Daryl and Andrea; Andrea betraying his brother and blabbing their location to the Governor. All of this happening under his nose - none of them told him. None of them told him anything.

"Unless you can provide me with a good reason not to, we will be following your brother and Rick when they leave. And they will be treated in the usual manner. And given that your loyalty to our town is now in question -"

"No," Merle says, suddenly. His mouth moves before he has the chance to stop it - he wills himself to think fast, think through the haze, try to come up with some situation that doesn't end with bullets in brains. "No."

"No?"

"My brother - and Rick, their whole gang - they don't have much. He told me himself," he lies. "They're starvin' there, ain't got much food, much water - let alone weapons to hunt. One of their women, she's pregnant - they barely got enough supplies to get her through the birth, let alone take care'o another mouth. They've got nothin'," Merle says. "Nothin' of use to us, anyway. Nothin' worth sendin' our men out in to danger for. You know how many walkers are gonna be in that prison yard? It ain't worth it. Not for a few measly huntin' rifles, some jerky...it ain't worth it."

Phillip takes a sip of his whiskey and regards Merle for a moment over the rim of the glass. "That so?"

"Promise," Merle says. "The best supplies they got on 'em are what they came here with. Otherwise why would they leave, why would they come here for medical supplies? They got nothing."

"That can change, though," Phillip says, and Merle shrugs.

"Sure," he says, as amicably as he can, "Anything can change."

Phillip places the glass down on the table and steps away from the desk, out towards the table, covered in its scraps and diagrams. He clasps his hands behind his back and looks out of the window in his office, the window that overlooks the town. "Merle, I think there's a favour that you might be able to do for me here."

_Merle stands, leaping out of the chair as though it's molten. He shoves it backwards, away from him, and begins pacing up and down the room before he recognises what his feet are doing._

_"Fuck off," he says, suddenly, turning to Father Christopher. "Fuck off, are you fuckin' kidding me?"_

_The Father extends a hand out to Merle, placing it on his forearm. "Merle, I am so sorry to have to deliver this news to you. Losing a parent -"_

_"Fuck you," Merle spits. "Don't gimme any of that 'losing a parent' bullshit, fuck you!"_

_He takes a number of small, quick breaths, in and out; hands balling in to fists and releasing almost of their own volition. He's never been so angry in his life - never hated so much in his life, hated the prison and all of the people in it, hated his family, hated the world. He tries to bury the images that rise up in his mind but he can't; he imagines another fight at home - Daryl in his bedroom, or off in the woods somewhere, where he usually disappeared to when things got tough - and his father beating in to his mother again, fists striking and striking. Except this time it would've been worse than all the other times, this time his father wouldn't have stopped until it was too late...Merle raises a hand and presses it to his eyes. Did she die instantly? Did she suffer - did she lay there for hours, in a pool of her own blood, until she finally gave up and her life ebbed away?_

_"Where's my brother?" Merle demands, suddenly. "Where's Daryl?"_

_"Merle, I'm going to need you to try to calm down before -" Father Christopher's voice is in his ear, buzzing, like an irritating fly._

_"Fuck that," Merle yells, feeling suddenly trapped by the Father's small office. "Where the hell is my brother? FUCK!" He's not thinking when he steps in towards the bookshelf and begins tearing volumes off it, picking up the leather-bound chapters and throwing them to the floor._

_"Merle...!" Father Christopher recoils behind the desk, ducking the flying projectiles, and the office door flings open to reveal two guards positioned on either side of it._

_"Dixon - on the ground, now!" Surging with adrenaline, Merle steps in towards the two guards and picks up the chair he had been sitting on previously. It's an old-style chair - puffy and upholstered, with curves and coils of wood on the back. He hurls it towards the guards, watching it bounce off the door frame and splinter in to two. The guards duck, avoiding most of the splintered pieces; and charge towards him, weapons drawn._

_Merle is dimly aware of Father Christopher trying to be the voice of reason, telling the guards that he's just lost a parent and if they could only talk for a few minutes, the whole situation would be resolved - but he doesn't want to calm down, doesn't want to be rational. He wants to find his brother and make sure the kid's okay; then find his father and beat him to a pulp. He's traded blows with his father before, sure, but it was kid stuff - this is different. He could kill him, Merle thinks. He wants to kill him._

_Something hard hits him over the back of the head as he's shoved down to the floor, and he finds himself face-first in the carpet as his arms are pinned behind his back and cuffed in to place. He kicks wildly, struggling against the force, vision blurred; and another guard rushes in to assist the two that are holding him down. He's eventually dragged to his feet, and he becomes aware of a trail of blood running down his neck from the crown of his head - he can bleed. He can be cuffed, and bleed. It's not the first time he's been pistol-whipped before. He sniffs deeply, still furious beyond his own control, but also hoping that the tears he can feel welling in the corners of his eyes don't fall. He can bleed all he wants; but men don't cry._

_He's dragged out in to the corridor, still kicking wildly at the guards. But it's then that he hears it, a few steps in to the corridor - his brother's voice. "Merle?" Daryl's voice is small. "Wh -"_

_Merle turns as best he can, craning over his shoulder. "Daryl?"_

_Daryl, his kid brother all of fifteen, skinny as a weed and looking disheveled as usual; is standing in the middle of the corridor by the Chaplain's Office. One of the women from the prison administration office is standing slightly back from him, looking confused - she had brought him here, Merle realises. He'd come alone, a minor, because he didn't even have a parent to visit with. Their father couldn't even be bothered doing this. Daryl's hair is just as long and unkempt as it has always been, sticking out at odd angles from the knitted woolen beanie he wears on his head. His jeans look about two sizes too big for his skinny frame, and his shirt hangs off him at an odd angle - it's been buttoned unevenly, Merle realises. He takes in his brother's reddened eyes, small frame; and realises he's never wanted to hug the kid so desperately in his life._

_"Why're you bleeding...?" Daryl cries, his hands clasped in front, picking at his fingernails. He always did do that when he was nervous, Merle remembers. The last time he came here - six months ago, just after Christmas - that was almost all he did, sitting at the table in the visitor's room next to their father. "What happened?"_

_"Daryl -" Merle starts, but it comes out as a sob. He swallows and tries again, turning his body towards his brother. "Daryl -" He's jerked back in to position, though, by the guard on his left. "Let me go!" he rages, struggling. "Let me talk to my brother!"_

_There's another thump on the back of his head and Merle falls to his knees, blood gushing again from the wound on his head split open for a second time. He sees, rather than hears, Daryl yell out his name and charge towards him - and he tries to yell out, 'no', tries to warn him back, but it's too late. Through the blood pounding in his ears he's dimly aware of the guards yelling at Daryl but he ignores them, as well; and his brother is inches away from him when the guard brings his pistol down again, still lightly spattered with Merle's blood; and drives the handle in to the side of Daryl's head._

"I want you to go with your brother, Merle," Phillip says. He stares out the window at his little town - the glow from the lamps burning in the street dances over his face, and shadows pass here and there over his eyes. Merle can't make out his facial expression. "You're going to go with your brother, but you're going to report back to me, as well. On a regular basis. You're going to come back and give me some little updates on their progress. The state of their supplies, their weapons, how much of the prison they've taken - everything."

Merle says nothing; only swallows around his dry mouth.

"After the Winter, when they've been able to settle in - we're going to come back with you. And your brother's group will be treated as any enemy group is treated. Is that clear?"

"You can't harm my brother," Merle says, instantly. "You do what you want to the others, but don't touch Daryl."

"If you manage to make it back to Woodbury, Daryl is more than welcome to join you," Phillip says, after a pause. "_If_."

Merle frowns. "What's to stop 'em from leaving, though? If they find somewhere else to stay, or if the prison gets over-run...?"

"If you do try to run, we will find out, Merle," Phillip says, turning back to face him. "You've seen the raids we've performed. We can hide in plain sight. If you, or any other member of the group, tries to leave the prison for good - we will find you, and we will hunt you down. We'll always have an eye on you."

Merle wills himself to take a deep breath. "You want me to sell out my own brother?"

"Does he deserve your loyalty?" Phillip snaps. "Isn't this the brother who left you chained to a roof in Atlanta? Forced you to cut off your own hand because he couldn't be bothered coming back to find you? You're no more a brother to him than I am to you - he sold you out the day he chose Andrea over you, Merle."

"I -"

"And do we not deserve your loyalty? After all we've done for you? Taking you in when you were skinny and starving and useless to everyone? Offering you medical care, food, a place to live? Safety? Indulging your addictions? Would your brother have done that? Would Rick have done that? What are you going to do, go back to the prison with your little cellmates, go cold turkey, live out a happy life together? The prison will become over-run, just as everywhere else has become over-run. Your chance of survival without us is slim to none." Spittle has collected in the corner of Phillip's mouth and he rolls his lips. His nostrils are flared, eyes boring in to Merle as he leans towards him.

Merle looks out the window, to the shadows dancing across the facades of the buildings across the street. Somewhere out there, his brother sleeps. When they were growing up together, most nights before bed Merle would sneak a peek in to Daryl's room - edging the door open slowly and quietly, to make sure his brother was sleeping soundly. Most nights, he would see the familiar shape of his small body lying under the blanket, curled on his side, head on the pillow and hair splayed out at every angle. Some nights, Daryl wouldn't be there at all - as young as ten, he would creep out of the house on bad nights and disappear off. Where, Merle never knew. He never saw him out with the other kids, drinking on corners or getting in to trouble behind the strip mall. Merle would sneak out too, for days; returning once his supply ran out or once the girls left and the party ended. He'd roll off a foreign mattress somewhere, put his boots on, and hitch a ride back home however he could. In the days before he had the bike, sometimes he walked a few miles back home; wilting under the hot sun.

One day, he saw Daryl returning as he arrived. He was leaving the woods near their house, hands in pockets, eyes to the ground. He never saw Merle, and Merle stayed back far enough that he couldn't be heard. He stopped knowing his brother, in those days. Between Daryl's disappearances and Merle's dalliances with a needle, they drifted further and further apart, only really reuniting in adulthood. But now - now, Merle thinks of the man sleeping soundly in Woodbury, and realises he doesn't know his brother at all.

"How long do I have?" Merle asks, finally.

"As long as you need," Phillip allows. "Maybe until after the Winter. I'll be expecting to see you fortnightly."

Merle nods, takes a breath.

"And don't worry," Phillip adds, removing a small plastic baggie from the top drawer of his desk. He throws it towards Merle and it lands on the floor, at his feet. "This won't dry up, either."

Merle bends to retrieve it and runs his thumb over the plastic. He watches the little crystals in the bag shift and break under the pressure. He hates himself, in that moment.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" Phillip muses. "Unless there's something I haven't made clear, you can go. You'll be let out of the main gates tomorrow at dawn. And I'll see you again soon."

_Merle slumps down against the wall, head in his hands. It's his second time in solitary confinement - the first time was only for a few hours, after a fight in the meal hall had gone awry; but this time he wasn't told how long he'd be placed there for._

_His hands hurt. His knuckles are bloodied and wrists chafed from the handcuffs, and his shoulder aches from where he had tried to struggle around the cuffs to free himself. The guards hadn't gone down easily - an elbow here, a kick there, he was strong, but they were stronger in numbers. If he thought he was angry before, he had never felt a rage like the one he felt when Daryl got hit - his own brother, just a kid, stepping in to defend him. The screw who'd pistol-whipped Daryl had received the most of Merle's anger - he headbutted him hard, over and over, smashing his forehead in to the bridge of the man's nose and watching him slump to the floor, blood gushing from his face._

_Merle had looked up towards Daryl as he was dragged away and seen the fear in his little brother's eyes - a fear he hadn't seen since the nights he'd come home high and belligerent and Daryl would duck away from him, scurrying in to his room. The woman from the office who'd accompanied Daryl was holding a white cloth over his head, stopping the blood and comforting him as she guided him away from the ruckus, from the danger, from his violent brother. The cause of all the mess._

_Daryl would be home now - presumably. If he hasn't disappeared off in to the woods again, or found a better place to see out the next week. His mother is probably lying in the city morgue now, cold and dead; and Merle has no idea how it even happened. Has no idea if his father was involved, or how Daryl is, or even when the funeral is. He has the sudden, cold realization that he probably won't even get to attend his mother's funeral, and he drops his head to his knees, eyes shut._

_Merle inhales, once, slowly, a breath dragged in between gritted teeth. He raises his head again and leans it back on the wall, eyes half-open in the darkness, and lets the tears run down his cheeks._


End file.
